Re: Org-mode is not able to manage complex calendar events

[Karl Voit <devnull@Karl-Voit.at>]

* Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:
> Karl Voit <devnull@Karl-Voit.at> writes:
>
>> * Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:
>>> you can clone with time shift whole trees, etc.  
>>
>> Oh, I have to look up that clone thing. This is new to me. Do you
>> happen to have an URL for this feature by instance?
>
> ,----[ org-clone-subtree-with-time-shift ]
>| ...
> `----

Wow, this is *great* news to me, thanks!

Although this is mentioned in chapter 2 of the Org-mode manual, I
strongly urge to mention this in section 8.3.2 «Repeated tasks»[1]
too!

Where can I place this wish?

> Sure; elisp is non-trivial.  Point taken!

Thanks :-) The resulting problem is that things I can only express
using sexp is non-trivial too.

I'd be glad to see something like this:

       * Event <2011-06-21 Tue +1w> <-2011-06-28 Tue>

... which lets me express an exception (each tuesday starting with
today but not next week) in an easy to use way.

> If there's any complaint one might have about org, is that it can
> be used for so many different tasks (calendar, task management,
> document preparation, etc.)  that it can be overwhelming.  

Agree. But I'd consider the calendar use-case as the worst supported
usecase in this list. I have seen the talks of Carsten Dominik and
AFAIR he clearly says that Org-mode's focus is task oriented and not
calendar oriented.

> Think of one of those very large swiss army knives where
> you can spend minutes just trying to find the right "blade" ;-).  But
> I'm not complaining! :->

:-) Me too *g*

> In any case, the org manual, the org web site and Worg, not to mention
> this mailing list, provide a wealth of information and use cases.

I love the documentation of Org-mode - it's pretty good!

>> For ELISP-hackers out there: is this hard to do? A method which
>> can be called «generate a series of Org-mode time stamps starting
>> with $THIS_TIMESTAMP_CONTAINING_REPEATS up to $THIS date». 
>>
>> I could think of generating such a series of <2011-06-22 Wed>
>> <2011-06-29 Wed> ... just to be able to see all occurrences of an
>> event and delete one specific event in between if necessary. This
>> would ease exceptions for «ordinary» users like me.
>
> See above;  I use org-clone-subtree-with-time-shift for setting up, for
> instance, the lectures I have to give in a teaching term.  I set up the
> initial lectures for each relevant day in the week and then clone the
> subtrees, removing any exceptions (reading/study weeks, say) afterwards.

Sure, org-clone-subtree-with-time-shift is very cool indeed. But it
goes in this direction:

    * Event <2011-06-21 Tue>
    * Event <2011-06-28 Tue>
    * Event <2011-07-05 Tue>
    * Event <2011-07-12 Tue +1w>

But I aim in a slightly different direction:

    * Event
        <2011-06-21 Tue>
        <2011-06-28 Tue>: additional note
        <2011-07-05 Tue>
        <2011-07-12 Tue +1w>

The latter one works pretty well and keeps my Org-file more clear.

So org-clone-subtree-with-time-shift is helping a lot for the upper
method but my personal preference would be the second example.

Is there already any solution to this too?


  1. http://orgmode.org/org.html#Repeated-tasks
-- 
Karl Voit