From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Christoph LANGE Subject: Bugs/features of accumulating property values when used with entries (concretely: in org-contacts) Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:28:52 +0100 Message-ID: <4EEB55A4.7090900@googlemail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:40315) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RbYmQ-00023J-PE for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:29:02 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RbYmK-0008CG-Ox for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:28:58 -0500 Received: from mail-ee0-f41.google.com ([74.125.83.41]:35185) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RbYmK-0008C6-K2 for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:28:52 -0500 Received: by eekc41 with SMTP id c41so3434476eek.0 for ; Fri, 16 Dec 2011 06:28:51 -0800 (PST) List-Id: "General discussions about Org-mode." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: Orgmode Mailing List Dear all, noticing the new feature "Property names ending in + accumulate" (as described on http://orgmode.org/Changes.html#accumulating-property-keywords – BTW, this exposes another issue with the fixed head bar on the new homepage, as the actual link target is hidden by the head bar), I thought I could use it in the property drawers of the entries of my org-contacts file, and noticed the following problems: 1. font lock (aka syntax highlighting) does not yet recognize :PROPERTY+: 2. accumulation doesn't work within the same entry; details follow: For some of my contacts I'd like to record multiple phone numbers or e-mail addresses. So far I have been doing that in an ad hoc manner, e.g. * Contact Name :PROPERTIES: :EMAIL: foo@bar.org, bar@baz.org :END: While I have not yet automated my usage of org-contacts, I thought it would be more scalable and more accessible to future scripting if multi-valued properties had a clear multi-value representation. (So the feature is not yet mission-critical for me.) I thought that the new accumulation feature might be suitable for that. (Or did I misunderstand the feature?) So when I changed the above contact entry to * Contact Name :PROPERTIES: :EMAIL: foo@bar.org :EMAIL+: bar@baz.org :END: I would have expected (org-entry-get (point) "EMAIL" t) to evaluate to, well, at least "foo@bar.org bar@baz.org" (and in some later version of org-mode maybe to a two-item list, for even easier automated processing). But I got the following unexpected results, which indicate that accumulation is not yet supported in this context (well, if it was ever _intended_…): (org-entry-get (point) "EMAIL" t) → "foo@bar.org" (org-entry-get (point) "EMAIL+" t) → "bar@baz.org" Cheers, and thanks for any help, Christoph PS: org-contacts may not be the best tool to use anyway. I like it so far, but if you know a better alternative that satisfies my requirements, I'd appreciate hints. My requirements so far are: * easily capturing information about contacts (addresses, birthdays, but also arbitrary other information) * grouping contacts (e.g. by tagging them) * linking to contacts from other org files * for easy display and editing (e.g. like org columns) -- Christoph Lange, http://www.facebook.com/ch.lange, Skype duke4701