Re: "Tag hierarchy" idea

[Christian Moe <mail@christianmoe.com>]

Hi,

There was some discussion of tag hierarchies in this thread:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/31882

It was largely inconclusive, except that it would be hard to 
implement. Noone took the ball and ran with it, but then noone came up 
with a strong use case or specification, either. Anyway, I recommend a 
look at that thread before continuing it here.

Yours,
Christian

On 3/22/11 12:09 AM, John Tait wrote:
> Hi all
>
> This is my first post. First, I'd like to thank all the org-mode
> developers for a great tool.
>
> I'm a technical editor. I am facinated by the pros and cons of
> structured documents with regard to their ease of use and power. I
> think that they are probably far too restrictive and cumbersome
> (looking at you, DITA) for the average technical document.
> Nevertheless, the idea of modular documents is an appealing one to me.
> I like conditional text features (e.g. in LyX).
>
> In org-mode, I really really love selective export (include/exclude
> tags) and using #+INCLUDE: for including other files. This gives me
> enormous flexibility, with zero DITA pain.
>
> May I propose an additional feature? I haven't seen anything like it
> published anywhere, though maybe I am using the incorrect search
> terms. (I am getting enormous vertigo and time-travel sickness reading
> up on Lisp, XML, DITA, etc.)
>
> It's a pretty basic idea, but I hope you can take a moment to weigh up
> its potential.
>
> We could assign tags to hierarchies of other tags.
>
>
> #+TAG-NEST: (colour(red green blue))
> #+TAG-NEST: (type(colour size))
> #+TAG-NEST: (car(type price))
>
> or maybe like this. I'd leave it up to someone with actual programming
> experience and a logical mind (my productive programming was PASCAL in
> 1991) to suggest a rigorous system that makes sense.
>
> #+TAG-NEST: colour > red:green:blue
> #+TAG-NEST: type > colour:size
> #+TAG-NEST: car > type:price
>
> The point of this would be that selecting, say, "colour" as a tag
> would bring along "red", "green", and "blue" along with it. The tag
> "type" would bring "colour", "red", "green", "blue" and "size" with it.
>
> The power of this would be that hierarchies could be adjusted and
> manipulated as necessary.
>
> Since there is no one definitive way to tag real world objects and
> ideas into nice nested boxes (thanks, AI research), we could adjust
> any tag hierarchies to suit experience and changing priorities. Even
> hierarchies could just be thrown away without affecting existing tags
> too much, since tagged headings could just be selected/excluded as usual.
>
> This way, we can use concept hierarchies as the disposable
> conveniences that they are, without getting locked into them. Looking
> at stuff like XSLT transformation for XML, that'd be worth avoiding.
>
> Maybe there is some logical lispy reason why this couldn't work, but I
> hope this is worthy of your consideration.
>
> John
>
> ------
>
> While I am here (sorry), I couldn't get #+FILETAGS: to work in
> org-version 7.4.
>
> For example, if I export a file (to html) File1.org  with
> "#+EXPORT_EXCLUDE_TAGS: john", and then I include File2.org, I can see
> File2.org included as part the export of File1 as expected. If I then
> set "#+FILETAGS: :john:" in File2, I'd expect File2 to now be
> excluded, but it still appears. If I then tag a File2 heading as say
> "* Heading :john:", then it won't appear in the File1 export, as
> expected. Am I missing something?
>