how to include items (filtered) from other org files?

[Michael Gilbert <mcg@gilbert.org>]

Hi —

Here's my challenge:

I manage a lot of complex, overlapping projects. One of these projects is a regular newsletter. Half of the content that goes out in this newsletter is created by the newsletter program itself. The other half is the result of several other projects, which produce reports and articles that get published in the newsletter. The publishing task in all those other projects are tagged with an 'nnpublish' tag. 

I want to be able to work on the newsletter project in one place. I don't want to maintain duplicate tasks in wildly different places. (You can imagine how out of hand this would get.) What I want to do is INCLUDE all of the other publishing tasks programmatically in the org file that I use to manage the newsletter. I am completely stymied as to how to do this.

The only information that I've had a change to look at that touches on the matter of including other files is in section 11.4 of the manual. If I'm not mistaken, it applies only to export. And the only processing that can be applied to the file being included is a limitation on which lines to include. Unless I'm missing something, this isn't going to meet my needs. I'm wondering if perhaps I need to be looking at code blocks. Maybe something that uses agenda code to grab items and then renders them in place. Oh hell, I don't know.

I'm pretty lost as to how to pursue this. Any thoughts?

TIA!

— Michael