feature request: a basic conversation manager

["Samuel Wales" <samologist@gmail.com>]

This took months to write, but only to be specific in the
spirit of the "how you can help" discussion.  The idea and
feature request are relatively simple.

To skip the preamble, search for [[here is a solution]].

A =conversation manager= is focused on phone conversations,
transcripts, letters, journal entries, etc.  A
=conversation= is one interaction or note.

The idea is to keep a global record of conversations of a
certain kind (e.g. phone calls to insurance companies or
doctors) while also keeping that information easily
accessible in the various org places where it belongs.

Some history:

Before I started using org, I kept a record of all medical
conversations in a file.  This provided a time-sorted place
to look for conversations.  I'll call this a =journal=,
after Carsten's usage in the manual.

I also had a todo file for data (e.g. phone numbers, people
to talk to about x), unfinished tasks (e.g. get insurance
company 1 to see reason, see doctor 1), etc.  This was an
indented plain text file in emacs.  I will call the org
equivalent =todo.org=.

I copied back and forth.

I want to do better than that with org, because org-mode is
powerful.

Here are some problems with using todo.org to keep
conversations and notes together:

  1.  The journal doesn't have all conversations; some are
      in todo.org unless I only use one consistently.

  2.  todo.org grows and extraneous information is in there.

  3.  The notes are scattered over todo.org.  For example, I
      might have a call to a doctor, and put that note under
      the todo item to call that doctor.  But that is bad
      when I want all medical phone calls in order.

  4.  I want conversations accessible from more than one
      place.  For example, if the conversation is under
      doctor 1, I also want it under the medical issue and
      possibly elsewhere, without duplication.

  5.  The journal doesn't have its entries in order, because
      I might add something else later that happened
      earlier, if I copy to journal from todo.

  6.  The todo.org notes are out of time order (i.e. the
      first conversation in the buffer is not necessarily
      the first conversation).

  7.  Except for metadata, conversations should be out of
      sight until they need to be looked up.

Of the many solutions that come to mind, here are a few that
I believe will *not* work:

  1.  Using ordinary links is not a solution, because you
      would have to click on each link to see only one
      conversation.  Also, you couldn't isearch all
      conversations at the same time.

  2.  Advising org-log-note to copy the note to the journal
      duplicates stuff.  That means that grep will find
      things in 2 places.  Also, it doesn't handle the
      question of notes that should be attached to more than
      one item.  Duplication is a disaster, IMO.

  3.  Keeping the notes scattered in todo.org precludes
      access to the journal outside org (e.g. if your
      computer crashes and you need to get the journal from
      your backups on a computer that does not run emacs),
      doesn't handle notes that should be attached to more
      than one item, keeps unnecessary stuff there, and
      increases the size of the org file.

Here is a solution that I believe will work:

  - <<here is a solution>>.  If you are on the doctor 1
    headline in todo.org, you run a command that shows all
    conversations with that doctor in a single buffer.

    The conversations are stored only in the journal.  A
    single place for all medical conversations that is still
    accessible from todo.org.

    Here is a design using drawers.  See below for a
    different design using org-id's that I think will be
    better.  This one is to illustrate the concept.

    - <<drawer design>>:

      - Each todo.org heading that has conversations gets
        a list that is like the CLOCK interval list,
        except that it contains links to conversations
        (I.e. journal entries).

        todo.org:

        * doctor 1
        :CONVERSATION:
        CONVERSATION: [2007-10-27 Sat 13:55] medical-journal.org
        CONVERSATION: [2008-12-01 Mon 16:10] medical-journal.org
        \:END:
        ** phone number is ...
        * insurance company 1
        :CONVERSATION:
        CONVERSATION: [2007-07-05 Thu 12:00] medical-journal.org
        CONVERSATION: [2008-12-01 Mon 16:10] medical-journal.org
        CONVERSATION: [2009-12-02 Wed 17:15] medical-journal.org
        \:END:
        ** talk to soandso

      (Perhaps the links would be actual links.)

      - A command (perhaps c-c c-c) gathers the
        conversations into a buffer.

      - To start a new conversation, a command inserts a
        link into todo.org and an entry in the journal.

      - The medical journal:

        * [2007-10-27 Sat 13:55]
        called mary at doctor 1's office about our appointment.
        ...
        * [2007-11-05 Mon 16:05]
        called doctor 2 about issue 1.  nobody was in.

      - The links below the todo.org headline give you an
        idea of when you have called doctor 1 without having
        to keep the actual conversations in todo.org.

    Here is the other design:

    - A different design, the <<org-id design>>, is
      arguably simpler, and I like it better:

      - Every journaled task gets a list of org-id's.
      - Each id refers to a conversation in the journal
        file.
      - Then we gather conversations using org-id's.

      Here are my comments on the org-id design:

      - This is a more general solution.  It will work for
        more than just conversations.  There are interesting
        possibilities here.
      - For backward links, we do the same in reverse, thus
        gathering the todo.org tasks that are related to the
        conversation.  The code is the same.  I'd recommend
        doing this by default.
      - This design does not show you the list of
        timestamps.  That is a drawback.
        - This might be solved by putting the target
          headline over the org-id as an overlay.  For
          conversations, the target headline is simply the
          start timestamp.  For future applications, it
          can be anything.

  Here are some comments on the solution in general (either
  of the designs).

  - Some comments:
    - There appear to be no archiving or expiry issues
      with this solution.
    - Here are 3 possible ways to create the buffer that
      contains the collected conversations.

      1.  Create a read-only buffer.
      2.  Have it actually be the journal buffer via
          folding or possibly via hiding.
      3.  Pass editing to the journal buffer a la grep mode
          or the org agenda.

      IMO, #2 would be ideal for the user.
    - Automatic journaling to another task also
      - It would be useful to specify that anything
        journaled below a place in the outline hierarchy
        should always also be journaled to that place.
        - A simple tag, :journal:, would work nicely.
        - In "/medical/doctors/doctor 1", talking to doctor
          1 also saves the conversation link to medical if
          and only if you put that tag on medical.  If you
          do not have the tag on anything, then the
          conversation will only be connected with doctor 1.
      - It might be useful to specify under "doctor 1" that
        it and anything below it should always also be
        journaled to "insurance company 1".  This might
        require an org-id for the target, which is another
        argument for org-id's, since we would do that anyway
        to go backward.
    - Of course, if you just want to use org-add-note to
      store a regular note, you can.

For me, this functionality would make org simpler to use.

Comments?

I have notes on future possibilities in case there is
interest.

Thanks.

-- 
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