Re: Bug: org-agenda-overriding-columns-format ignored every other refresh

[Nick Dokos <ndokos@gmail.com>]

Russell Yanofsky <russ@yanofsky.org> writes:

> Hi list,
>
> I've been having a problem where my agenda column format is ignored every other time I load or refresh the agenda, which makes it very hard to use. When this happens, I see the following error in *Messages*: "Making
> org-agenda-overriding-columns-format buffer-local while locally let-bound!" which led me to experiment and find that when I delete the following lines from the org-agenda-finalize function, the problem seems to be fixed:
>
> - (if (and (boundp 'org-agenda-overriding-columns-format)
> - org-agenda-overriding-columns-format)
> -    (org-set-local 'org-agenda-overriding-columns-format
> -   org-agenda-overriding-columns-format))
>
> I'm wondering what these lines were intended to do, and if it's safe to delete them.
>

It's most probably the wrong thing to do. For one, you are not supposed
to set org-agenda-overriding-columns-format.  The docstring says:

,----
| org-agenda-overriding-columns-format is a variable defined in `org-colview.el'.
| Its value is nil
| 
| Documentation:
| When set, overrides any other format definition for the agenda.
| Don't set this, this is meant for dynamic scoping.
`----

> My org-agenda-custom-commands value is:
>
>   '(("n" "Agenda and all TODO's" ((agenda "" nil) (alltodo "" nil)) nil)
>     ("r" "Russ Agenda" agenda ""
>      ((org-agenda-overriding-header "Russ Agenda") (org-agenda-view-columns-initially t)
>       (org-agenda-overriding-columns-format "%80ITEM %TAGS %7TODO %5Effort{:} %6CLOCKSUM{Total}"))
>      ("~/public_html/agenda.html"))
>     ("q" "Russ Todos" alltodo ""
>      ((org-agenda-view-columns-initially t)
>       (org-agenda-overriding-columns-format "%80ITEM %TAGS %7TODO %20SCHEDULED %5Effort{:} %6CLOCKSUM{Total}")
>       (org-agenda-skip-function (quote (org-agenda-skip-entry-if (quote todo) (quote ("DEFERRED")))))
>       (org-agenda-sorting-strategy (quote (scheduled-up effort-up))))
>      ("~/public_html/todo.html"))
>     )

You probably should use org-agenda-columns-current-fmt instead of
org-agenda-overriding-columns-format. Untested and quite possibly
wrong, or at least not the whole story; but until an agenda expert
chimes in, it might be a useful first step.

Nick