Managing appts with org-mode, diary

Managing appts with org-mode, diary

[Michael Welle]

Hello,

currently I create diary entries for my appointments, the appointments
are marked in the calendar. This is handy because if I want to create a
new appointment I can overview a three month period and I can see at a
glance which days are already blocked.

Now I want to manage my appointments in a more project centric
way. For instance I work at ten projects that have ten corresponding org
files. Now I note appointments for a certain project in the
corresponding org file. The appointments are still marked in my
calendar, but that is unusable slow. If I use the per month org agenda
view the display is way to confusing to get an overview and decide on
which day I can make a new appointment. 

How do you deal with this problem? I can imagine to generate a ~/.diary
file every time I add or change an appointment in org mode. This would
speed up the process of displaying the calendar. An agenda view that
shows a three month period or so and that has all the sub nodes of the
days hidden might help, too. Then days, that have already appointments,
are marked and you have to show the sub nodes if you need detailed
information about appointments of that day. Is somethind like that
already implemented and I haven't found it yet ;)? Any hints are welcome.


Regards
hmw

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Re: Managing appts with org-mode, diary

[Matt Lundin]

Michael Welle <mwe012008@gmx.net> writes:

> currently I create diary entries for my appointments, the appointments
> are marked in the calendar. This is handy because if I want to create a
> new appointment I can overview a three month period and I can see at a
> glance which days are already blocked.
>
> Now I want to manage my appointments in a more project centric
> way. For instance I work at ten projects that have ten corresponding org
> files. Now I note appointments for a certain project in the
> corresponding org file. The appointments are still marked in my
> calendar, but that is unusable slow. 

Yes, unfortunately marking org-mode entries makes the calendar is
extremely slow. IMO, the only way to use org-mode as a substitute for
the diary is to turn off calendar marking, either with the variable
calendar-mark-diary-entries-flag or by putting an ampersand in front of
the org-diary line in your diary file, e.g.,

&%%(org-diary :timestamp :sexp)

> If I use the per month org agenda view the display is way to confusing
> to get an overview and decide on which day I can make a new
> appointment.
>
> How do you deal with this problem? I can imagine to generate a
> ~/.diary file every time I add or change an appointment in org mode.
> This would speed up the process of displaying the calendar. An agenda
> view that shows a three month period or so and that has all the sub
> nodes of the days hidden might help, too. Then days, that have already
> appointments, are marked and you have to show the sub nodes if you
> need detailed information about appointments of that day.

I'm afraid a three month view wouldn't be any faster than marking three
months in the calendar. The bottleneck is the time it takes org-mode to
generate three months worth of agenda entries.

> Is somethind like that already implemented and I haven't
> found it yet ;)? Any hints are welcome.

Three suggestions:

1. Use a custom agenda command to display a weekly calendar with
   appointments only.

   --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
   ...
           ("cc" "Calendar" agenda ""
            ((org-agenda-ndays 7)
             (org-agenda-start-on-weekday 0)  ; start on Sunday
             (org-agenda-time-grid nil)
             (org-agenda-entry-types '(:timestamp :sexp))
             (org-agenda-prefix-format " %-12:t ")
             (org-deadline-warning-days 0)
             (org-agenda-include-all-todo nil)
             (org-agenda-repeating-timestamp-show-all t)
             (org-agenda-filter-preset '("-nocal1"))
             (org-agenda-hide-tags-regexp ".*")
             ))
   ...
   --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

   Using org-agenda-entry-types makes this fairly fast, since scheduled
   and deadline entries are not even considered. Moving back and forward
   quickly with f and b is quick and efficient.

   Switching to a monthly view takes a little time, but is still a lot
   faster than marking three months of dates in the calendar.

2. Use the fancy diary display to view upcoming appointments.

   (add-hook 'diary-display-hook 'fancy-diary-display)

   The diary will only show days for which there is an appointment. I
   control the number of weeks shown with a wrapping function:

   --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
   (defun my-diary-display (weeks)
     (interactive "p")
     (let ((diary-number-of-entries (* 7 weeks)))
       (diary)))
   --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

3. For a very nice monthly calendar, use the calendar's cal-tex export
   function (t m).

   The following defadvice will make the output a lot more readable:

   --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
   (defadvice org-diary (around my-org-diary activate)
     (let ((org-agenda-prefix-format "%t %s "))
       ad-do-it))
   --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Best,
Matt

Re: Managing appts with org-mode, diary

[Michael Welle]

Hello,

Matt Lundin <mdl@imapmail.org> writes:

> Michael Welle <mwe012008@gmx.net> writes:
>
>> currently I create diary entries for my appointments, the appointments
>> are marked in the calendar. This is handy because if I want to create a
>> new appointment I can overview a three month period and I can see at a
>> glance which days are already blocked.
>>
>> Now I want to manage my appointments in a more project centric
>> way. For instance I work at ten projects that have ten corresponding org
>> files. Now I note appointments for a certain project in the
>> corresponding org file. The appointments are still marked in my
>> calendar, but that is unusable slow. 
>
> Yes, unfortunately marking org-mode entries makes the calendar is
> extremely slow. IMO, the only way to use org-mode as a substitute for
> the diary is to turn off calendar marking, either with the variable
> calendar-mark-diary-entries-flag or by putting an ampersand in front of
> the org-diary line in your diary file, e.g.,
>
> &%%(org-diary :timestamp :sexp)
that's what I've done for the moment. But the feature is useless for me
if I can't see at a glance which days are already blocked with
appointments. If I'm at a customer's site or phone with one, I can't do
clickclickwaitandherenowclickclickwaitsomemoreetc ;). I have to
clickclick and propose an appointment next wednesday ;).


>> If I use the per month org agenda view the display is way to confusing
>> to get an overview and decide on which day I can make a new
>> appointment.
>>
>> How do you deal with this problem? I can imagine to generate a
>> ~/.diary file every time I add or change an appointment in org mode.
>> This would speed up the process of displaying the calendar. An agenda
>> view that shows a three month period or so and that has all the sub
>> nodes of the days hidden might help, too. Then days, that have already
>> appointments, are marked and you have to show the sub nodes if you
>> need detailed information about appointments of that day.
>
> I'm afraid a three month view wouldn't be any faster than marking three
> months in the calendar. The bottleneck is the time it takes org-mode to
> generate three months worth of agenda entries.
Yepp. That's why I played with the idea to generate a diary file or
something like that if an appointment is created or changed -or in
general, if an event occurs-. This involves the danger that one might
work with outdated data, but would speed up things a great deal.


>> Is somethind like that already implemented and I haven't
>> found it yet ;)? Any hints are welcome.
>
> Three suggestions:
>
> 1. Use a custom agenda command to display a weekly calendar with
>    appointments only.
Looks like a good starting point. I will try it and see how it feels
using it.


> 2. Use the fancy diary display to view upcoming appointments.
I currently use fancy diary. It's nice to have an overview of the
current day and the upcoming appointments of the next n days. But this
'oh, there is an important appointment in {three|two|one|zero} days'
clutters the agenda view even more ;). This is where it would be nice to
have the agenda view tree like, too. The days could be nodes and the
appointments could be subnode of the day, that could be shown or
hidden. I'm relatively new to org-mode (convertit from planner-mode as
you might know ;-), so I don't know exactly if such a feature is already
implemented or if it could be done without huge amounts of work.

Thanks for sharing your ideas. If anybody else has to say something
about this topic, don't hesitate. I'm interested in your opinions and
ideas, not only down to a technical level but also how you use org-mode,
how your 'processes' are etc.

Regards
hmw

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