Re: org-indent-mode corrupted most of a big org file

[Rainer Stengele <rainer.stengele@online.de>]

Am 04.12.2013 09:25, schrieb Nicolas Goaziou:
> Hello,
>
> Rainer Stengele <rainer.stengele@online.de> writes:
>
>> last week I played around with org-indent-mode in my biggest (37.000 lines) org file.
>> 3 days later I detected that most of the file was corrupted.
>> WHy so late? Using the agenda I only saw the todos and did not recognise the corrupted structures.
>> Most "*" items had been placed at the beginning of the line and therefore now became headlines.
>> I do not know how this happened. I am not sure if I myself was the reason somehow.
>> Anyway I had to spend a fair amount of work to get the old file format from
>> subversion and insert the changes since the corruption.
>>
>> This is just a warning to have backups at hand before changing to org-indent mode.
>> Then immediately and check often the contents of the file until you are sure all is running well.
>>
>> Maybe someone has an idea.
>>
>> I will try to convert again later but then be much more careful.
> For the sake of correctness, `org-indent-mode' cannot corrupt a file. It
> only modifies two text properties, `line-prefix' and `wrap-prefix',
> never the contents of the file.
>
> Something else corrupted that file. `org-indent-mode' possibly made it
> harder to notice, but you're looking after the wrong culprit.
>
>
> Regards,
>
Good to know.
But the indent-mode made it quite easy to mess up most of the file.
I think I tried somehow to delete the now no more needed whitespace and messed things up without noticing it.
I am afraid there is no easy way to "convert" a non org-indent-mode to a nice formatted org-indent-file.
For smaller files I went through them page by page and left shifted lists and items manually.
As far as I remember even Bernt Hansen did the work manually after switching.
Maybe someone has a suggestion.

Regards, Rainer