On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 10:48 AM, Phil! Gold <phil_g@pobox.com> wrote:

> I've been through all of the export and publishing documentation and what
> I could find about includes and I can't see a way to do what I want to
> accomplish.
>
> I have multiple org files, each of which represents a project, with the
> first level headings representing milestones for the project and lower
> headings providing more detail.  I currently publish these as HTML for my
> manager to peruse.  I would like to construct, as automatically as
> possible, an overview page for my manager.  I would like to be able to
> list my active and inactive projects and, for each one, include just the
> milestone headings from the project file, ideally any SCHEDULED, DEADLINE,
> or CLOSED timestamps on the headings.  I haven't found anything that seems
> to come close to doing what I want.  Any pointers to similar examples,
> useful functions or settings, and the link would be appreciated.
>
> For a concrete example, say I have the following two project files.
>
> # project-a.org
> * DONE Milestone A-1
>   CLOSED: [2012-11-01 Thu 15:54] DEADLINE: <2012-11-01 Thu>
> ** Milestone details
> * STARTED Milestone A-2
> * TODO Milestone A-3
>   Some descriptive text.
>
> # project-b.org
> * STALLED Milestone B-1
>   DEADLINE: <2012-11-05 Mon>
> * TODO Milestone B-3
> * Future Goal
> ** Future goal details.
>
> I would like to do something that gets me HTML output similar to the
> following:
>
> <h2>Projects In Progress</h2>
>
> <h3>Project A</h3>
> <h4>DONE Milestone A-1</h4>
> <p>CLOSED: 2012-11-01 Thu 15:54 DEADLINE: 2012-11-01 Thu</p>
> <h4>STARTED Milestone A-2</h4>
> <h4>TODO Milestone A-3</h4>
>
> <h3>Project B</h3>
> <h4>STALLED Milestone B-1</h4>
> <p>DEADLINE: 2012-11-05 Mon</p>
> <h4>TODO Milestone B-3</h4>
> <h4>Future Goal</h4>
>
> <h2>Future Projects</h2>
> <!-- So on and so forth... -->
>
>
>

I'm actually wondering if you couldn't write a custom agenda view for this
easier than trying to concatenate two files. Agenda already includes the
file name, so if it's descriptive enough it would be clear to your manager
which "project bucket" it was looking at. Or make an agenda view with
headers for each project. You could include the todo/done/stalled status as
well as scheduled/deadline dates. Agenda views can easily be exported to
html with C-x C-w while looking at the view.

Maybe google around for some custom agenda views and see if exporting those
to html format might be something that could work for you. Just thought it
might be easier than trying to call together content from a bunch of files
via an exporter that's not really made to do that. Agenda is.

For custom agenda views (if you're not familiar), you might want to check
out:
- Exporting agenda to html:
http://orgmode.org/manual/Exporting-Agenda-Views.html
- Manual on custom views: http://orgmode.org/manual/Custom-agenda-views.html
- Bernt Hansen's very nice section on custom agenda views:
http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html#CustomAgendaViews


Good luck!
John