From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Karl Voit Subject: Re: Org-mode is not able to manage complex calendar events Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:51:25 +0200 Message-ID: <2011-06-20T17-33-36@devnull.Karl-Voit.at> References: <87aaddaqhz.fsf@ucl.ac.uk> <2011-06-20T13-43-17@devnull.Karl-Voit.at> <87y60wfu05.fsf@pinto.chemeng.ucl.ac.uk> Reply-To: news1142@Karl-Voit.at Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:39227) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QYglM-0004LG-Me for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Mon, 20 Jun 2011 11:51:45 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QYglK-0001jy-1o for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Mon, 20 Jun 2011 11:51:44 -0400 Received: from lo.gmane.org ([80.91.229.12]:38235) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QYglJ-0001jh-J0 for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Mon, 20 Jun 2011 11:51:41 -0400 Received: from list by lo.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1QYglH-0003TT-Uo for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:51:39 +0200 Received: from mail.michael-prokop.at ([88.198.6.110]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:51:39 +0200 Received: from news1142 by mail.michael-prokop.at with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:51:39 +0200 List-Id: "General discussions about Org-mode." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org * Eric S Fraga wrote: > Karl Voit writes: > >> IMHO: Org-mode does *not* seem to be made for managing calendar >> events that go beyond simple one-time-occurrence events. > > I would argue that this is not at all the case, especially if you > consider that org uses a tree hierarchy and tags so that one can group > separate entries in a variety of ways, This is fore sure a big advantage of Org-mode! > you can clone with time shift whole trees, etc. Oh, I have to look up that clone thing. This is new to me. Do you happen to have an URL for this feature by instance? > Most calendar tools require you to specify all the > conditions for a particular "event" in one go whereas with org you can > have a number of different entries for the same "event"... etc. Full ack. > Also, with sexp, you can manage practically anything you might like > although, of course, it does require learning a certain amount of > elisp. Recurring events with exceptions are not a problem, for > instance. I'd consider myself tech-savvy. But without having learned (E)LISP (yet), I can not use sexp-entries without reading a manual each time I want to use it. This is nothing I'd consider for normal users or daily use. It's not that end-user friendly (when you consider end-users as users without ELISP knowledge). For ELISP hackers this might work! But I am not sure how much percentage of Emacs/Org-mode users actually learned ELISP. And learning ELISP just to be able to write down a recurring event seems «strange» to me. > In any case, as always with computer tools, what works for you is what > matters! Full Ack. > For me, org is just plainly much more suitable for my mode of > working; every other calendar system I have tried has constrained me > much more. But that's *me*. This holds for most of the calendar systems out there, I totally agree. (This is why I still carry around my old PalmOS-PDA together with my highly sophisticated Android smartphone...) >> but you *have* to support at least the same featureset of Outlook >> Calendar in order to think of a (two-way-) sync mechanism to >> Org-mode. > > I guess this depends on what types of events you are likely to > have in the outlook calendar. In my case, only a small feature > set is likely necessary (mostly repeating lectures and one off > meetings) so a sync should be possible. I don't think anybody is > proposing a full-blown totally automatic sync mechanism between > org and Outlook (or whatever) that covers the union of the two > products' feature sets... insanity lies in that direction ;-) Sorry, I might have exaggerated a bit. But since I was implementing a one-way-sync mechanism between two different calendar systems I got a pretty good feeling of how different you can define the very same thing. Recurring events with exceptions is quite common but very hard to sync between different systems! And I am sure that this is not the only example of «being common and hard to do». > But I'll worry about this later this year when forced to use MS... Oh, sorry to hear about that :-( For ELISP-hackers out there: is this hard to do? A method which can be called «generate a series of Org-mode time stamps starting with $THIS_TIMESTAMP_CONTAINING_REPEATS up to $THIS date». I could think of generating such a series of <2011-06-22 Wed> <2011-06-29 Wed> ... just to be able to see all occurrences of an event and delete one specific event in between if necessary. This would ease exceptions for «ordinary» users like me. -- Karl Voit