Re: support range durations

[Guido Stevens <guido.stevens@cosent.net>]

On 9/15/24 14:02, Ihor Radchenko wrote:
> Guido Stevens <guido.stevens@cosent.net> writes:
> 
>> As per https://orgmode.org/manual/Column-attributes.html I'm using range
>> durations to express effort estimations. Those get summarized nicely in
>> column views, using the {est+} summarizer. But when I access an agenda
>> view that encounters a task that has such a range duration directly set,
>> the agenda chokes with an error message:
>>
>> 	org-duration-to-minutes: Invalid duration format: "1d-2d"
> 
> May you please provide more details on how to trigger the error?

Sure. I'm providing the Doom keybindings for the actions I'm taking.

1. Abbreviated snippet from my Doom config:

(use-package! org
   :defer t
   (setq!
    org-global-properties
    `(("Effort_ALL" . "0 0.5d 0.5d-1d 1d 1d-2d"))))

2. Set estimate "1d-2d" on a task (C-c C-x e)

3. Open an agenda view that contains that task (C-c n a t)

org-duration-to-minutes: Invalid duration format: "1d-2d"


> 
>> ...
>> * lisp/org-duration.el (org-duration-to-minutes): Do not choke on
>> low-high range durations (e.g. "2d-5d") when rendering an agenda. Calculate the average
>> of the range instead.
>>
>> Range durations are valid when estimating effort, and supported
>> elsewhere via the {est+} summarizer.
> 
> Org mode durations have no notion of ranges. It is completely
> org-colview thing. So, modifying `org-duration-to-minutes' is not
> appropriate. We need to fix org-colview, not org-duration.
> 

The reproduction above does not involve org-colview.

The disagreement apparently is, that org-colview says range durations 
are supported for effort estimates, and even has code handling them via 
the {est+} summarizer, when they are not supported in org-duration.

https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/blob/f27553c30a772a0103d2e6762e4d7f588f302e4b/lisp/org/org-colview.el#L1419

I get your point about not accepting this patch. None of the other 
functions or docstrings in org-duration mentions or handles ranges, fair 
enough.

I'm puzzled though, because I did not come up with this feature. It's 
genuinely useful and it appears to have worked in the past.
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2014-12/msg00435.html

Maybe sorting agenda views by effort was not active at that stage: I 
suspect that is what is triggering the error. Which points to a 
potential solution (and also to a potential speed optimization): even 
when I am not sorting on effort at all, this error is thrown, so why is 
org-duration-to-minutes even called at all in the agenda view? Is there 
a way to disable that?

I.e. even when I simplify my sorting strategy to:

    org-agenda-sorting-strategy
    '((agenda priority-down)
      (todo priority-down)
      (tags priority down)
      (search priority-down))
    )

org-duration-to-minutes is called and throws an error. Why is it even 
called?

I'm out of my depth in Lisp and don't know how to properly step that 
call flow.


-- 
     Guido Stevens    |   Cosent   |     https://cosent.nl

     s o c i a l   k n o w l e d g e   t e c h n o l o g y