From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "Samuel Wales" Subject: feature request: a basic conversation manager Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:44:17 -0700 Message-ID: <20524da70811261844o3f47782ay3437fdfdc55bda95@mail.gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1L5Wre-00077z-4x for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 26 Nov 2008 21:44:22 -0500 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1L5Wrb-00077n-N7 for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 26 Nov 2008 21:44:21 -0500 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=41931 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1L5Wrb-00077k-JT for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 26 Nov 2008 21:44:19 -0500 Received: from mu-out-0910.google.com ([209.85.134.187]:27310) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1L5Wra-00089g-Pw for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 26 Nov 2008 21:44:19 -0500 Received: by mu-out-0910.google.com with SMTP id i2so626240mue.6 for ; Wed, 26 Nov 2008 18:44:17 -0800 (PST) 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 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: - <>. 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. - <>: - 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 <>, 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. -- Myalgic encephalomyelitis denialists are knowingly causing further suffering and death by opposing biomedical research on this serious infectious disease. Do you care about the world? http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/What_Is_ME_What_Is_CFS.htm