From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Paul Menair Subject: question and use example Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:38:29 -0400 Message-ID: <20090826163829.GA4578@new-host-2.home> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Return-path: Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1MgLWB-0006ze-JK for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:38:39 -0400 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1MgLW6-0006ui-Qc for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:38:39 -0400 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=37654 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1MgLW6-0006uJ-KM for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:38:34 -0400 Received: from mx20.gnu.org ([199.232.41.8]:34883) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1MgLW6-000157-3m for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:38:34 -0400 Received: from mail-iw0-f185.google.com ([209.85.223.185]) by mx20.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1MgLW4-0001QF-TC for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:38:33 -0400 Received: by iwn15 with SMTP id 15so183344iwn.14 for ; Wed, 26 Aug 2009 09:38:31 -0700 (PDT) Content-Disposition: inline List-Id: "General discussions about Org-mode." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org Folks, I've been struggling with something and thought I'd ask you folks. I'm an attorney. I use org-mode for various things, because it's convenient, simple and flexible. And most case management software for lawyers is awful. Anyway, one of the things I do in org is keep my time. The ordinary timekeeping function in org is interesting and neat in some ways, but not useful for my purposes. I need to provide my employer with a set of timeslips, where each record consists of a date, client name, description, and time interval in decimal form. Everything that I've tried that attempts to "help" me do this fails in one way or another. The solution I have is a table in org that is set up like this: | date | client | desc | [time]--[time] | H:M | x.x | Org is perfect for this because it does what no other time and billing solution I've seen does -- it lets me just record two timestamps in plain text and get an interval. The only other piece of software I've ever seen that does this was a calendar program that let you do this in its notes field. My problem is this. I populate the fifth field with c-- c-u c-y. I would be nice if it happened automatically, but that's no big deal. However, I've been going through and manually entering the sixth field, and that does end up being a hassle. Calc seems to only work on timestamps and not have any straight way to convert H:M to decimal. I suppose I could keep my in and out timestamps in separate fields and figure out a way to have calc work on them, but it seems like there should be an easier solution. Any thoughts? In any event, I thought it might be of interest for folks to see a use case from a non-engineering professional. Paul