showing lists in agenda, and writing org-agenda to a file

["Eric Schulte" <schulte.eric@gmail.com>]

Hi,

I've started using tools to display my org-agenda as part of my
desktop (geektool http://projects.tynsoe.org/en/geektool/ on my Mac,
and conky http://conky.sourceforge.net/ on my linux box).  In doing so
I put together the following little function (below), which I though I
would share in the hope that either someone finds it useful, or
someone has already done this and can share a better method of
accomplishing the same (I'm in the early stages of learning elisp).

Also, In some cases I would like to display the entire body of a
subtree in my custom org-agenda view.  Specifically subtrees where the
body is a checkbox list...

** TODO Chores [/] at [2008-01-06 Sun 11:40]
   - [ ] dishes/kitchen
   - [ ] walk patton
   - [ ] MITRE (2 hours)
   ...

Any suggestions for accomplishing this?

Thanks,
Eric


;; dump agenda to file
(defmacro line-length()
  "Length of a line in number of characters"
  (length (buffer-substring (save-excursion (beginning-of-line) (point))
                (save-excursion (end-of-line) (point)))))
(defun org-agenda-to-file (key file-path &optional max-width)
  "Write the org-agenda to a specified file.  Can be useful for
displaying the agenda outside of emacs.  'key' will be the key
passed to org-agenda, file-path is the path to which the agenda
will be written, and 'max-width' optionally specifies a maximum
line width for the text in the resulting file."
  (interactive)
  (save-excursion
    (save-window-excursion
      (let ((org-agenda-window-setup 'reorganize-frame))
        (org-agenda "a" key)
        (switch-to-buffer "*Org Agenda*")
        (write-file file-path)
        (org-agenda-quit)
        (if max-width
            (progn
              (find-file file-path)
              (dotimes (line (count-lines (point-min) (point-max)))
                (goto-line (1+ line))
                (if (> (line-length) max-width)
                    (progn
                      (move-beginning-of-line 1)
                      (forward-char max-width)
                      (delete-char (- (line-length) max-width)))))
              (save-buffer)
              (kill-buffer (current-buffer))))))))
;; execute with a shell command like this
;; (org-agenda-to-file "a" "~/.desktop-display" 60)