Re: Tips on maintaining history in Org Mode

[TRS-80 <lists.trs-80@isnotmyreal.name>]

On 2021-02-26 01:22, David Masterson wrote:
> There are many ways of maintaining history in a group of Org files:
> 1. Archive within a file
> 2. Archive to a separate (archive) file
> 3. Special TODO types for history
> 4. Special TAG types for history
> 5. etc.
> 
> My question is, if you have meetings/phone calls as TODOs, what is the
> preferred way to handle when they move into history so that, *much*
> later, you can easily produce a list of all of the meetings/phone calls
> with dates and times of them?  The issue (I think) is, when you mark 
> the
> TODO as DONE, you lose the info of what the TODO was originally.
> 
> Suggestions

I agree with what others already said about logging state changes with
timestamps.  I do the same and find this an extremely handy place to
put "metadata about the task, or reason that it changed" and keep it
separate/hidden from the main body of the task (which in my mind
should only contain info about the subject of the headline / task
itself).

However when you say "history" I suspect you mean "archive" and this
is something I have been thinking about a long time as well.  Because
I think the current way that Orgmode handles this is a bit naive /
simplistic.  Well, at least there is the option to create your own
archival function, which I suspect I will do at some point.  In fact I
have been thinking about the best way to do that for some time
already.

Cheers,
TRS-80