From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jan Kybic Subject: DAG structure / hard links / shared subtrees Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:11:11 +0100 Message-ID: <87liq4uda8.fsf@fel.cvut.cz> Reply-To: kybic@fel.cvut.cz Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:39793) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RdfcO-0004aW-CN for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Thu, 22 Dec 2011 05:11:24 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RdfcK-0008IV-CZ for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Thu, 22 Dec 2011 05:11:20 -0500 Received: from mail-ee0-f41.google.com ([74.125.83.41]:51581) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RdfcK-0008I5-88 for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Thu, 22 Dec 2011 05:11:16 -0500 Received: by eekc41 with SMTP id c41so8677784eek.0 for ; Thu, 22 Dec 2011 02:11:15 -0800 (PST) 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 Dear org-mode users, this is my first post, so let me first state that I am using org-mode more and more for organizing my daily agenda and I find it really useful. I have a feature request. The structure of the org file is a tree. I wondered if it could be made a directed acyclic graph (DAG) instead. In other words, could a subtree be shared between two trees? In yet another words, a kind of Unix directory structure with hard links. One possible use case is as follows: I am preparing a meeting that concerns several projects. I have my org file structured by projects. I want to prepare an agenda for this meeting, which would contain the issues to discuss from the projects. I want to be able choose the order the issues. During the meeting, I want to add notes. Right now, I see the following options: a) I can copy the subtrees corresponding to issues from the projects. However, if I later edit either of the copies, I would need to synchronize the changes manually. b) I can make an internal link from the agenda to the issues. However, the agenda would then not contain the full detail of the issues, just a short part of the headline. During the meeting I would have to jump there and back. c) I can create the meeting agenda dynamically, by assigning tags to projects and creating a sparse tree, e.g. from the Agenda buffer. However, this requires me to mark every issue to be discussed with a meeting-specific tag. I do not have much control over the order in which the issues appear. I cannot structure them. The generation takes time. And it is not straightforward to add new items to the meeting. I am not familiar with the internals of the org-mode but I can envision several possible implementations: a) Enhance existing links so that they can be expanded in-place to show the whole subtree, not just a start of the headline. Ideally, it should be possible to make changes there but a read-only access would also help. b) Physically copy "linked" trees to the new location. Make the copies share an Id but have a unique subId. Then when one of the copies is changed, the changes are propagated into other copies. I believe a lot of the logic could be borrowed from org-mobile, which also performs synchronization. What do you think, does it sound feasible? Is there any other way to achieve what I want with org-mode? Thank you very much and keep up the good work. Yours, Jan -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jan Kybic tel. +420 2 2435 5721 or 5877 http://cmp.felk.cvut.cz/~kybic ICQ 200569450