Re: Documentation wishlist items

[Matthew Lundin <mdl@imapmail.org>]

Ethan <ethan.glasser.camp@gmail.com> writes:

> On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 11:34 PM, Matt Lundin <mdl@imapmail.org> wrote:
>
>     My guess is that this allows him to see what group an item belongs
>     to in
>     the agenda view, since categories are listed in the left column.
>    
>     But this is like asking why someone puts their pots in the cupboard
>     next
>     to the oven rather than above the sink, or why someone uses legal
>     pads
>     rather than a spiral notebook.
>
> And if you were setting up a kitchen for the first time, wouldn't you
> ask that kind of question? :)

Agreed. What I meant by the analogy is that often these times decisions
come down to personal convention/habit. You just start doing things one
way and they stick. 

The analogy was in part a reminder to myself to avoid worrying about the
"one right way." :)

As a point of comparison, I divide my files according to area of
responsibility (household.org, health.org, family.org, writing.org,
etc.) so that I can quickly review what I need to do in each area. When
I'm done with an item, I archive it and it is nicely deposited in the
appropriate archive file. If a project within one of these files becomes
quite big, I create a new file for it. I almost never set CATEGORY,
because all my appointments are already organized by category (i.e.,
file name).
>
>     My recommendation: Just start creating trees, use only a few TODO
>     states, and allow the organization to evolve in the way that feels
>     the
>     most comfortable to you.
>
> At the time of this writing, I've stumbled because I have had one file
> called TODO which is becoming too cluttered for me to process usefully.
> I used C-c C-v to show only TODO items, but some TODO items have
> ellipses indicating content while some have ellipses indicating DONE
> items afterwards, so I end up expanding a bunch of DONE items. 

Is this necessarily a bad thing? If you expand a TODO item with a bunch
of DONE items, it might indicate that you should either 1) create a new
TODO item or 2) mark the parent item as DONE.

> I have a TODO state called BLOCKING which clutters the view too. 

Perhaps you could make the BLOCKING state it an inactive todo state in
order to exclude it from the sparse tree view.

#+SEQ_TODO: TODO(t) | DONE(d) BLOCKING(b) 

> I have a vague sense that learning how to use the agenda would help,
> but I haven't gotten to it yet, since I've been trying to put together
> a coherent org-mode setup by cargo-culting things from the advanced
> users' setups. This probably isn't the best way to go about it, of
> course..

The agenda is calling you! :)

I wouldn't worry about custom commands until you need them. Just type
type C-c a t or C-c a T "TODO" and you'll get a "clean" list of all your
todos.

Hope this helps.
Matt