Bastien <bzg@gnu.org> writes:

> Check boxes have only three state: empty, checked, undecided.
>
> If you need more states, I suggest using a property.
> Then the column view can be used to display a summary
> of the "sum" of all properties in the subtree.

Thanks for the pointer, Bastien.  This looks like a fine way to do
things.  

I've been able to "capture" the columnview into another .org file and
then export that to an HTML file.  Is there a way to automate these
three steps?


Notes on what I did so far follow.

In a "notes.org":

* Document status
 :PROPERTIES:
 :COLUMNS: %25ITEM(Section) %25Responsible %3Received{X} %3Converted{X} %3Editing{X} %3Frozen{X}
 :Responsible_ALL: Person1 Person2 Person3
 :Received_ALL: "[ ]" "[X]"
 :Converted_ALL: "[ ]" "[X]"
 :Editing_ALL: "[ ]" "[X]"
 :Frozen_ALL: "[ ]" "[X]"
 :ID:       document-status
 :END:   

** Section 1
*** Subsection 1.1
     :PROPERTIES:
     :Responsible: Person1
     :Received: [X]
     :Converted: [ ]
     :END:


Etc for other sections.  Hints:

 - only need to add properties in sub (or subsub, etc) sections where
   they are strictly needed.  Parents inherit from children

 - don't actually edit :PROPERTIES: by hand instead do C-c C-x C-c to
   turn on columns and "e" in a cell to edit it with values from the
   list of possible ones in the *_ALL and/or do C-c C-c to toggle values

I shall look into adding numerical values to get %-done type columns.

Then for presentation.  As per

  http://orgmode.org/manual/Capturing-column-view.html

To make presentation with just this tree of info make another file
"status.org" with:

* Status
#+BEGIN: columnview :vlines t :hlines 1 :id "document-status"
#+END:

Go to "BEGIN" and hit C-c C-c and a table will be inserted.  Then a
normal export to HTML can be done.   


-Brett.