org priority cycling - removing priorities

org priority cycling - removing priorities

[Rick Moynihan]

Every now and then I find myself mispressing SHIFT-up/SHIFT-down on an 
outline and assigning a priority to it.  This then often leads me to 
navigating the point to the priority to delete it manually.

It would be great if SHIFT-up/SHIFT-down would cycle through:

[#A]
[#B]
[#C]
_ - blank (i.e. no priority).

This way I could easily undo the operation with the same keys.  Is there 
any good reason not to have this behaviour?

R.

Re: org priority cycling - removing priorities

[William Henney]

Hi Rick

On 9/6/07, Rick Moynihan <rick@calicojack.co.uk> wrote:
> Every now and then I find myself mispressing SHIFT-up/SHIFT-down on an
> outline and assigning a priority to it.  This then often leads me to
> navigating the point to the priority to delete it manually.
>

In the meantime, you can always use "C-_" to undo the mistake...

Cheers

Will

-- 

  Dr William Henney, Centro de Radioastronomía y Astrofísica,
  Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Campus Morelia

Re: org priority cycling - removing priorities

[Carsten Dominik]

On Sep 6, 2007, at 15:37, Rick Moynihan wrote:

> Every now and then I find myself mispressing SHIFT-up/SHIFT-down on an 
> outline and assigning a priority to it.  This then often leads me to 
> navigating the point to the priority to delete it manually.
>
> It would be great if SHIFT-up/SHIFT-down would cycle through:
>
> [#A]
> [#B]
> [#C]
> _ - blank (i.e. no priority).
>
> This way I could easily undo the operation with the same keys.  Is 
> there any good reason not to have this behaviour?


Don't know how good this reason is, but here it is:

The default priority is #B.  If you press S-up on an entry without 
priority, it
will switch immediately to #A.  Similarly, S-down will go immediately 
to #C.

If I were to include the empty state in the cycling, S-up would go

#A -> nil #A -> nil

But as I said, this may not be good enough a reason.  Open for 
discussion.

- Carsten

Numeric Priorities (Was: Re: org priority cycling - removing priorities)

[Nuutti Kotivuori]

Carsten Dominik wrote:
> But as I said, this may not be good enough a reason.  Open for
> discussion.

I find the priority settings almost unusable for me.

For personal things, I just use them simply with the default settings
to mark tasks that really should be done ASAP ([#A]) - and tasks which
really aren't so important at all ([#C]). This is fine enough.

But for my work tasks, priorities are really important as they are
given to me externally. So I need a lot of priority levels, both up
and down from the default. And atleast I'm not so savvy with alphabet,
that I could instantly see how much less important [#P] is than [#T] -
especially with respect to the default level etc.

So, how about adding a new feature, org-todo-use-numeric-priorities.

This would make the priorities be like:

  * TODO [#+2] Task 1
  * TODO [#+1] Task 2
  * TODO Task 3
  * TODO [#-1] Task 4
  * TODO [#-2] Task 5

And there wouldn't need to be any "highest" or "lowest" values for the
priorities. Also, I couldn't ever figure out why there needs to be a
way to specify the default priority explicitly (eg. [#B] vs. lines
that have none) - so I'd just vote for dropping that - no priority
listed if the priority is zero.

This way I could always set some task on a higher priority if
necessary, or a lower one - and I'd only have problems if I need to
have something in between priorities (if we don't go for float values
;)), but that should be easily solvable by a bit of preplanning or
just editing a few task priorities.

How about it?

-- Naked

Re: Numeric Priorities (Was: Re: org priority cycling - removing priorities)

[Carsten Dominik]

Hi,

On Sep 9, 2007, at 16:30, Nuutti Kotivuori wrote:

> Carsten Dominik wrote:
>> But as I said, this may not be good enough a reason.  Open for
>> discussion.
>
> I find the priority settings almost unusable for me.

[...]

> But for my work tasks, priorities are really important as they are
> given to me externally. So I need a lot of priority levels, both up
> and down from the default. And atleast I'm not so savvy with alphabet,
> that I could instantly see how much less important [#P] is than [#T] -
> especially with respect to the default level etc.
>

You can do all this by just inserting your own marker into entries.
The question is what do you want to *do* with these.

> So, how about adding a new feature, org-todo-use-numeric-priorities.
>
> This would make the priorities be like:
>
>   * TODO [#+2] Task 1
>   * TODO [#+1] Task 2
>   * TODO Task 3
>   * TODO [#-1] Task 4
>   * TODO [#-2] Task 5

You can use priorities 0-9 now.  Me personally, I believe this
priority game becomes entirely useless for more than a few values.

Any other takes on this?

- Carsten

Re: Numeric Priorities (Was: Re: org priority cycling - removing priorities)

[Dmitri Minaev]

On 9/9/07, Nuutti Kotivuori <naked@iki.fi> wrote:
> And there wouldn't need to be any "highest" or "lowest" values for the
> priorities. Also, I couldn't ever figure out why there needs to be a
> way to specify the default priority explicitly (eg. [#B] vs. lines
> that have none) - so I'd just vote for dropping that - no priority
> listed if the priority is zero.
>
> This way I could always set some task on a higher priority if
> necessary, or a lower one - and I'd only have problems if I need to
> have something in between priorities (if we don't go for float values
> ;)), but that should be easily solvable by a bit of preplanning or
> just editing a few task priorities.

Terve, Nuutti,

I often use priorities, but I would rather call them some other way,
since this name is somewhat misleading. For example, my reading diary
has the following header:

#+PRIORITIES: 1 9 5

and I rate the read books from 1 to 9. I leave the books unrated till
I finish reading. So, to equal missing priority to a default priority
would break this system.

-- 
With best regards,
Dmitri Minaev

Russian history blog: http://minaev.blogspot.com

Re: Numeric Priorities

[Bastien]

"Dmitri Minaev" <minaev@gmail.com> writes:

> #+PRIORITIES: 1 9 5
>
> and I rate the read books from 1 to 9. I leave the books unrated till
> I finish reading. So, to equal missing priority to a default priority
> would break this system.

And maybe you would prefer the default priority for your books (5) be
the first reachable one ... (see previous discussion in this thread.)

-- 
Bastien

Re: Numeric Priorities

[Dmitri Minaev]

On 9/24/07, Bastien <bzg@altern.org> wrote:
> And maybe you would prefer the default priority for your books (5) be
> the first reachable one ... (see previous discussion in this thread.)

Reachable via C-up? It is. But Nuutti offered to interpret the absent
priority as the default one, and I prefer to differentiate between the
unrated entries and the entries with a priority.

-- 
With best regards,
Dmitri Minaev

Russian history blog: http://minaev.blogspot.com

Re: Numeric Priorities

[Bastien]

"Dmitri Minaev" <minaev@gmail.com> writes:

> On 9/24/07, Bastien <bzg@altern.org> wrote:
>> And maybe you would prefer the default priority for your books (5) be
>> the first reachable one ... (see previous discussion in this thread.)
>
> Reachable via C-up? 

(I assume you meant S-up?)

> It is. But Nuutti offered to interpret the absent priority as the
> default one, and I prefer to differentiate between the unrated entries
> and the entries with a priority.

With Org 5.09 and #+PRIORITIES: A C B you need to do press S-up S-down
(or S-down S-up) to set the default priority -- or did I miss something?

My suggestion [1] was that S-up/down first set the *default* priority,
then increases/decreases the priority cookie. Anyway, it looks like this
request depends too much of what *I* expect from priorities, so I won't
dwell too much on this, it's not that important to me.

Thanks,

Notes: 
[1]  http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/3255/match=priority

-- 
Bastien

Re: Numeric Priorities

[Dmitri Minaev]

On 9/24/07, Bastien <bzg@altern.org> wrote:

> > Reachable via C-up?
>
> (I assume you meant S-up?)

Ahem... Yes. :)

> With Org 5.09 and #+PRIORITIES: A C B you need to do press S-up S-down
> (or S-down S-up) to set the default priority -- or did I miss something?
>
> My suggestion [1] was that S-up/down first set the *default* priority,
> then increases/decreases the priority cookie. Anyway, it looks like this
> request depends too much of what *I* expect from priorities, so I won't
> dwell too much on this, it's not that important to me.

Ah, but the notion of the default priority has no special meaning
besides what jumps up after the first S-up, so we can easily assume
that the "default" priority is A :). Or set the priorities line to
#+PRIORITIES: A C C

-- 
With best regards,
Dmitri Minaev

Russian history blog: http://minaev.blogspot.com

Re: Numeric Priorities

[Bastien]

"Dmitri Minaev" <minaev@gmail.com> writes:

> Ah, but the notion of the default priority has no special meaning
> besides what jumps up after the first S-up, so we can easily assume
> that the "default" priority is A :). 

Indeed.

> Or set the priorities line to #+PRIORITIES: A C C

But then S-down on a headline with no priority yields this message: 
"No priority cookie found in line" -- which might actually be okay. 

Again, maybe this is just *my* own bias that make me feel the cycling
should not stop... and again, we shouldn't fuss to much on this issue!

-- 
Bastien

Re: Numeric Priorities

[Nuutti Kotivuori]

Dmitri Minaev wrote:
> But Nuutti offered to interpret the absent priority as the default
> one, and I prefer to differentiate between the unrated entries and
> the entries with a priority.

If I haven't understood this completely wrong, it *is* interpreted as
the same!

That is, entries with no priority are sorted at the same spot as
entries with the default priority - and entries with lower than
default priority are sorted below them.

If you are not talking about sorting, then I don't know what you are
talking about - since sorting is the only thing I can see priorities
affecting, otherwise they are just letters on a line with no
special significance.

-- Naked

Re: Re: Numeric Priorities

[Carsten Dominik]

On Sep 24, 2007, at 4:02, Nuutti Kotivuori wrote:

> Dmitri Minaev wrote:
>> But Nuutti offered to interpret the absent priority as the default
>> one, and I prefer to differentiate between the unrated entries and
>> the entries with a priority.
>
> If I haven't understood this completely wrong, it *is* interpreted as
> the same!
>
> That is, entries with no priority are sorted at the same spot as
> entries with the default priority - and entries with lower than
> default priority are sorted below them.

This is correct.

- Carsten

Re: Re: Numeric Priorities

[Dmitri Minaev]

On 9/24/07, Carsten Dominik <dominik@science.uva.nl> wrote:
> > That is, entries with no priority are sorted at the same spot as
> > entries with the default priority - and entries with lower than
> > default priority are sorted below them.
>
> This is correct.

Indeed. Sorry.

-- 
With best regards,
Dmitri Minaev

Russian history blog: http://minaev.blogspot.com

Re: org priority cycling - removing priorities

[Dmitri Minaev]

On 9/6/07, Rick Moynihan <rick@calicojack.co.uk> wrote:
> Every now and then I find myself mispressing SHIFT-up/SHIFT-down on an
> outline and assigning a priority to it.  This then often leads me to
> navigating the point to the priority to delete it manually.
>
> This way I could easily undo the operation with the same keys.  Is there
> any good reason not to have this behaviour?

C-c , <Space> seems comfortable enough to suffice...

-- 
With best regards,
Dmitri Minaev

Russian history blog: http://minaev.blogspot.com

Re: org priority cycling - removing priorities

[Renzo Been]

Yes,

I agree, the same mis-typing also happens with me, so this woulb be a good 
option...

Ciao,
Renzo

Rick Moynihan <rick <at> calicojack.co.uk> writes:

It would be great if SHIFT-up/SHIFT-down would cycle through: 


[#A]
[#B]
[#C]
_ - blank (i.e. no priority).

Re: org priority cycling - removing priorities

[Xavier Maillard]

   Every now and then I find myself mispressing SHIFT-up/SHIFT-down on an 
   outline and assigning a priority to it.  This then often leads me to 
   navigating the point to the priority to delete it manually.

I also miss something here: one more step to remove a priority in
this cycling story.

	Xavier
-- 
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