Re: Duration Tally

["Scott Jaderholm" <jaderholm@gmail.com>]

On 6/19/07, Carsten Dominik <dominik@science.uva.nl> wrote:

> So the discussion must be about how you would like Org-mode to make
> use of such data.  Obviously it would be easy to write (as you
> suggest) a little function that returns all this data as, say,
> a property list.  But then you would still need to use it in
> some way.  Are you suggesting tis as a feature where some users
> (those who can write Lisp code) write their own extensions?
> That is certainly an option.  Are you also envisioning ways
> how Org-mode should use this?

I see a property list under each heading as a way of doing columns,
albeit in a less user friendly way. I can see this being useful
anywhere you have hierarchal data to which you would like to add
structure. Currently, I normally transfer it into a table, but it
would be nice to be able to leave things as a list and still define
some columns. See
http://www.omnigroup.com/images/applications/omnioutliner/features/multicolumn.jpg

Perhaps a property list has the advantage of being easier for the
programmers and being a better way to store the data in a text file,
but I think it would be really sweet if an interface were built on top
of it so that the user saw something similar to the picture above.

Carsten,
Have spreadsheet like columns for lists been discussed before, and if
so, what was the verdict?

--Scott