How could I mix COMMENT and TODO?

How could I mix COMMENT and TODO?

[François Pinard]

Hi, Orgers of this world! :-)

I do not find how to mix COMMENT and TODO in a working way, and I
thought that someone could advise me.

For ease and simplicity, I try to keep everything related to some topic
in a single file, merely commenting (C-c ;) headers for those parts I do
not want to publish.

I would also like to keep my TODO entries for this topic in the same
file, and these are usually not to be published either.  However, TODO
seems to be ignored whenever it is on or under a COMMENT header.  When I
comment a TODO entry, the TODO gets un-highlighted, and the entry
scheduling disappears from the agenda.

So, until I find something better, I keep these TODO in another file,
which I find an awkward compromise.  I could use #+BEGIN_COMMENT and
such within the entry, but the header itself gets published, which I do
not want.  So, what is the proper way for fully preventing a working
TODO header from being published?  Or else, what is the good approach?

François

Re: How could I mix COMMENT and TODO?

[Sebastien Vauban]

Hi François,

François Pinard wrote:
> Hi, Orgers of this world! :-)
>
> I do not find how to mix COMMENT and TODO in a working way, and I
> thought that someone could advise me.
>
> For ease and simplicity, I try to keep everything related to some topic
> in a single file, merely commenting (C-c ;) headers for those parts I do
> not want to publish.
>
> I would also like to keep my TODO entries for this topic in the same
> file, and these are usually not to be published either.  However, TODO
> seems to be ignored whenever it is on or under a COMMENT header.  When I
> comment a TODO entry, the TODO gets un-highlighted, and the entry
> scheduling disappears from the agenda.
>
> So, until I find something better, I keep these TODO in another file,
> which I find an awkward compromise.  I could use #+BEGIN_COMMENT and
> such within the entry, but the header itself gets published, which I do
> not want.  So, what is the proper way for fully preventing a working
> TODO header from being published?  Or else, what is the good approach?

Instead of COMMENT'ing entries, I prefer the "tag" version of the same
functionality: mark the entries you don't wanna see exported with the
`noexport' tag.

Best regards,
  Seb

-- 
Sebastien Vauban

Re: How could I mix COMMENT and TODO?

[suvayu ali]

On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 13:34, François Pinard <pinard@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
> I would also like to keep my TODO entries for this topic in the same
> file, and these are usually not to be published either.  However, TODO
> seems to be ignored whenever it is on or under a COMMENT header.  When I
> comment a TODO entry, the TODO gets un-highlighted, and the entry
> scheduling disappears from the agenda.

Just use the noexport tag on the parent tree with the TODOs.


* Tasks                                :noexport:
** TODO foo
** TODO bar


-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.

Re: How could I mix COMMENT and TODO?

[François Pinard]

suvayu ali <fatkasuvayu+linux@gmail.com> writes:

> François Pinard <pinard@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
>> I would also like to keep my TODO entries for this topic in the same
>> file, and these are usually not to be published either.

> Just use the noexport tag on the parent tree with the TODOs.

> * Tasks                                :noexport:
> ** TODO foo
> ** TODO bar

Excellent!  Thanks a lot for remembering me this feature (I read about
it a while ago, then forgot).  It even works fine if we directly use:

> * TODO foo                             :noexport:
> * TODO bar                             :noexport:

I much prefer this :noexport: tag to the COMMENT feature, and I changed
them all.  I also fully re-merged my split files, so everything is now
in its proper place.  Happiness! :-)

François


P.S. A tiny chat follows.

In my very first tries with Org, a few months ago, I put all Org files
into the agenda, to discover that Org was very, very slow.  So, I
changed it all and collected all agenda and TODO into three files only,
holding lots of links to all other Org files where the information
really was.  Org recovered all its speed.  And besides, to repair the
lost search capabilities, I kludged M-x rgrep so it could search all Org
files and "reveal" contents when visiting hits.  Well, the "reveal" does
not always work, but yet, the quicker search is constantly useful to me.

Currently, having put TODOs back in their proper Org files and declaring
them as agenda files, 38 agenda files are taken out from 360 Org files.
Even if slightly less speedy than 3 agenda files, this is still very
bearable: Org does not crawl.  The way Org handles "org-agenda-files" as
a string naming a file is really convenient to me, it eases the writing
of external programs acting on them all.  All in all, very satisfactory!