Some struggles of mine with org-mode

[lngndvs@gmail.com]

   [This post concerns what have become, for me, conflicts between the
   scopes of org-agenda-files and the universe I would like to search
   within all org files, in particular.  I hope I will be forgiven for
   drifting substantially from that focused topic]

    Org-mode is well entrenched into my daily work flow, in many
    ways.

     - Miscellaneous notes
     - Capturing ideas and articles
     - On-the-fly structured captures of several kinds
     - Todo lists
     - Remembering   deadlines and activities
     - Collecting project information from diverse sources
     - Exporting any of the above, just about anything at all, as
       clean PDF files.
     - The occasional Beamer presentation 

   For all that org-mode has become my go-to tool of choice, there are
   a number of things I still struggle with.  I want to post this
   message as, I suppose, too much of a blanket request.  Here are
   some of the things I don't get:

     - Firefox or other browser integration
     - Email.  Some very elegant (in  complicated ways) solutions have
       been generated, but all I need it simple text-based email.  I
       would be willing to install sendmail or postfix, if need be,
       but I don't really wish to send html based email.  See the next
       item. 
     - Addresses/Contacts.  I like Gnus, and I like BBDB, but I've
       never been completely comfortable with them.   I used to keep
       contacts in EDB,  a database I designed myself, and it worked
       really, really well.  I've posted about his subject before, and
       I can see it didn't strike a chord on this list.  I tried
       org-contacts, but it seems  idiosyncratic, and limited.
     - Setting up birthday alerts, for example.  I feel intimidated
       every time I am about to try to put a new birthday in a
       list.  Ideally, I would do this with a capture template.  The
       best so far is to keep birthdays in a list in .emacs.el
     - Searching.  One  thing I really like about Org-mode is the
       ability to keep a large number of kinds of information straight
       in various ways---either in separate files, or for related
       topics, in different headlines of  the same file.  I need all
       of these files to be searched.   The best searching seems to
       reside in the agenda interface.   But it seems illogical, to
       me, to constrain searching to the same set of files as for an
       Agenda, except if I am only searching things I am currently
       keeping on todo lists.  I want a large subset of *.org files
       open for searches, but I may want to limit the number of files
       processed  for a daily or weekly agenda view.  Am I missing
       something? 

        A utility on the mailing list, org-occur-goto, searches any
       open files, an improvement.  But the very fact I am searching
       for something suggests this will require a greater search
       universe.  Ideally, that universe will include several
       large subtrees, even though within them, only a small number of
       files may be involved.  For example, one would like to have a
       directory, at some random location in the home "~/" tree, for
       recipes.  I want them to be kept together in an integral
       tree.  But I want some of the files to be kept under org-mode
       control.  Do I want these files in my agenda files?  

       I do not wish to have all of my action dumped together in ~/org
       or some such.   Examples  subdirectories might include:

       - ~/HEALTH-ISSUES/
       - ~/ARTICLES/tuning-the-guitar/
       - ~/PROJECTS/recipes/

       I have a large ~/WorkBench directory that includes all ongoing
       work.  I may not know on any  given day which existing projects I
       will be working on.  I like to scatter my TODOs among the
       project files, but I need to maintain instantaneous access to
       them, especially through the agenda views. 


    So, to summarize,  org-agenda-files should reflect those files I
    need to access because they have TODOs, Deadlines, Happenings, or
    Reminders in them.  My search Universe should be constrained
    enough to result in instant searches, but not so constrained as
    org-agenda-files that need to be processed to produce a daily
    agenda.