Re: C-c ^ for plain lists? Why not?

[Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com>]

On 8.10.2012, at 20:25, Nicolas Goaziou wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> James Harkins <jamshark70@gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> I've started to like checklists because they are a good way to keep
>> account of things that have to be done, without the individual items
>> being entered into the agenda (and thus transferred to MobileOrg).
>> 
>> But I'm running into the limitation that plain lists can't be sorted
>> *by their checklist status*. You can sort alphabetically, numerically
>> or by time or function. So, I guess I have to write a lisp function to
>> do it... but I don't have time to do that right now, but I need to
>> sort the list now...
>> 
>> Valid feature request?
> 
> There are four states: checked box, unchecked box, transitory box and no
> box at all. I can't see an order that should be prevalent over others.

I would think that 
   
    checked - transitionary - unchecked - no box

is a pretty decent default.  

> 
> As such, I think it is a specific use-case that should be treated by "f"
> or "F" sorting key. Such a sorting function could be an interesting Org
> Hacks addition.

Playing with this idea I noticed that the sorting function
did not accept their additional arguments like sorting-key
and get key-function in they way they should.  So I patched
them, to make the following work in the current master:

(defun org-sort-list-by-checkbox-type ()
  "Sort list items according to Checkbox state."
  (interactive)
  (org-sort-list
   nil ?f
   (lambda ()
     (if (looking-at org-list-full-item-re)
	 (cdr (assoc (match-string 3)
		     '(("[X]" . 1) ("[-]" . 2) ("[ ]" . 3) (nil . 4))))
       4))))

Depending on how you want the sorting, you can change ?f to ?F to
reverse, and/or you can change the numbers in the alist to modify
the sort order in any way you like.

HTH!

- Carsten