Calculated Properties & Column View Totals

Calculated Properties & Column View Totals

[Russell Adams]

I was moving my budget into Org, and while trying to make it work via
column view and properties I ran into two major impediments.

First, properties can't be calculated from one another ala spreadsheet
or elisp (ie: Property C = Property A + Property B). Thus I had to add
conversion to a dynamic block capturing the column view as formulas.

Second, though column view and captured columns support totaling by
tree hierarchy (ie: parent shows sum of children), I can't add a total
row to the bottom of the dynamic blocks that is preserved across
updates.

Here's a sample:

* Summaries

#+BEGIN: columnview :hlines 3 :id "Budget"
| ITEM                        | VENDOR | DUE | FREQ |  AMOUNT | BIMONTHLY | MONTHLY |    YEARLY |
|-----------------------------+--------+-----+------+---------+-----------+---------+-----------+
| *** Optional                |        |     |      | -250.00 |   -250.00 | -250.00 |   -250.00 |
| **** TODO Russell Fun Money |        |   1 |  0.5 | -250.00 |   -250.00 | -500.00 |  -6000.00 |
#+TBLFM: $6=$5*(1/$4)/2;%.2f::$7=$5*(1/$4);%.2f::$8=$5*(1/$4)*12;%.2f
#+END:

No entry has a BIMONTHLY, MONTHLY, or YEARLY property. I used that to
create the columns for my formulas so that I can populate those
numbers. The parent has the wrong sum because it is using the property
values, not summing from the spreadsheet calculation.

* Budget Items
  :PROPERTIES:
  :COLUMNS:  %25ITEM %15VENDOR %3DUE %3FREQ %AMOUNT{+;%.2f} %BIMONTHLY %MONTHLY %YEARLY
  :ID:       Budget
  :END:

** Expenses
   :PROPERTIES:
   :FREQ:    1
   :END:

*** Optional

**** TODO Russell Fun Money
   :PROPERTIES:
   :DUE:      1
   :AMOUNT:   -250.00
   :FREQ:     0.5
   :END:

I've reverted to using spreadsheet with hyperlinks for items so I can
keep notes... I really thought that column view would be superior
though.

Perhaps this will inspire some new features.

Thanks.


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Russell Adams                            RLAdams@AdamsInfoServ.com

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