Marking a task done

Marking a task done

[Wanrong Lin]

Hi,

I have not followed very closely on the "dependency" thread that is hot 
now. But I guess my wish here probably relates to it. The feature I wish 
for is:

When a TODO item is marked "DONE", all TODO items under that tree are 
automatically marked as "DONE". More generically, the user should be 
able to customize what states (for me, that is "DONE", "CANCELED", 
"SUSPENDED", "DELEGATED") will affect the whole subtree like "DONE".

Someone in the "dependency" thread has raised similar features, but I 
wish this can be implemented before the big "dependency" plan is sorted 
out. :-)

Wanrong

Re: Marking a task done

[Christian Egli]

Wanrong Lin <wanrong.lin <at> gmail.com> writes:

> When a TODO item is marked "DONE", all TODO items under that tree are 
> automatically marked as "DONE". More generically, the user should be 
> able to customize what states (for me, that is "DONE", "CANCELED", 
> "SUSPENDED", "DELEGATED") will affect the whole subtree like "DONE".

The point of of hierarchical TODOs is that you can group a number of TODOs and
only have one entry in the agenda. If you look at the classical example (which
is even in the documentation AFAIK):

* TODO Organize party
** TODO Invite people
** TODO Bake a cake

In my agenda I see that I have a TODO to organize the party. If I look closer
now (Tab on the agenda entry) I see that I also have to bake a cake. I can now
tick of the subtasks individually and finally mark "Organize party" as DONE once
all subtasks are done. I could also decide that I want to see all the subtasks
in the agenda and hence remove the TODO from "Organize party". This will show
all the subtasks in the agenda. This gives you a lot of flexibility and lets you
group TODOs nicely.

Your proposal pretty much ignores and destroys all of this. Can't you just
select the whole subtree and mark all TODOs in the subtree as DONE? I thought
5.10 introduced this feature.

HTH
Christian 

Re: Marking a task done

[Richard G Riley]

Wanrong Lin <wanrong.lin@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi,
>
> I have not followed very closely on the "dependency" thread that is
> hot now. But I guess my wish here probably relates to it. The feature
> I wish for is:
>
> When a TODO item is marked "DONE", all TODO items under that tree are
> automatically marked as "DONE". More generically, the user should be
> able to customize what states (for me, that is "DONE", "CANCELED",
> "SUSPENDED", "DELEGATED") will affect the whole subtree like "DONE".

Interesting. For me it probably be the opposite.

e.g If I had a task called "Project 1" I would expect it to be
automatically marked done when all sub tasks are marked as cancelled or
done.

In addition, a lot of people like marking each task with notes as they
change state so I think the onus is on the org user to take
responsibility to manually mark sub components - it is here (on the
individual items of work) that a lot of work goes into things like which
set of states a task can be, notes, scheduling times, clocks etc.

>
> Someone in the "dependency" thread has raised similar features, but I
> wish this can be implemented before the big "dependency" plan is
> sorted out. :-)
>
> Wanrong
>
>
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> Emacs-orgmode mailing list
> Remember: use `Reply All' to send replies to the list.
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Re: Marking a task done

[Bastien]

Richard G Riley <rileyrgdev@googlemail.com> writes:

> e.g If I had a task called "Project 1" I would expect it to be
> automatically marked done when all sub tasks are marked as cancelled
> or done.

Okay, then a :BLOCKER: on "Project 1" wouldn't let you mark it DONE
until all sub-items are DONE.

-- 
Bastien

Re: Marking a task done

[Bastien]

"Eddward DeVilla" <eddward@gmail.com> writes:

> Would BLOCKER just prevent it from being marked done or would it do
> the automatic marking he asked about?

BLOCKERs would block an action for the current task unless/until other
tasks change their todo states.

> Would that be a combination of BLOCKER and TRIGGER?  I'm starting to
> get it.  It seems a like it might be a little too verbose yet, but it
> definitely seems like it could be very flexible.

Yes.  The :DONE>: {...} was definitely too verbose, I was just exploring
possibilities, trying to make them both human-readable and programmable.

-- 
Bastien

Re: Marking a task done

[Bastien]

Wanrong Lin <wanrong.lin@gmail.com> writes:

> When a TODO item is marked "DONE", all TODO items under that tree are
> automatically marked as "DONE". More generically, the user should be
> able to customize what states (for me, that is "DONE", "CANCELED",
> "SUSPENDED", "DELEGATED") will affect the whole subtree like "DONE".

Yes, this was the purpose of my suggestion 
  
  :DONE: {TODO 'subtree "DONE"}

But this can be achieved with :TRIGGER: as well.

-- 
Bastien

Re: Marking a task done

[Carsten Dominik]

I have to agree with the other posters that this seems to be the wrong
idea.  First of all, the danger is reasonably large that you
mark an entry DONE by accident, and then you will loose all state info 
in the subtree.

Even the other way round, marking a parent DONE when all children are
is not something I would recommend.  Because that assumes that your
planning is *complete* in the sense that the set of subtasks is
complete.  I like to stand still for a moment when all these subtasks
are DONE, to decide if this really finishes the parent and then marking
it DONE.

- Carsten

On Oct 9, 2007, at 5:22, Wanrong Lin wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have not followed very closely on the "dependency" thread that is 
> hot now. But I guess my wish here probably relates to it. The feature 
> I wish for is:
>
> When a TODO item is marked "DONE", all TODO items under that tree are 
> automatically marked as "DONE". More generically, the user should be 
> able to customize what states (for me, that is "DONE", "CANCELED", 
> "SUSPENDED", "DELEGATED") will affect the whole subtree like "DONE".
>
> Someone in the "dependency" thread has raised similar features, but I 
> wish this can be implemented before the big "dependency" plan is 
> sorted out. :-)
>
> Wanrong
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Emacs-orgmode mailing list
> Remember: use `Reply All' to send replies to the list.
> Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode
>
>

--
Carsten Dominik
Sterrenkundig Instituut "Anton Pannekoek"
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Kruislaan 403
NL-1098SJ Amsterdam
phone: +31 20 525 7477