Re: Occurance property, or some similar name?

[Memnon Anon <gegendosenfleisch@googlemail.com>]

Hi,
Christopher Allan Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> writes:

> I was once one of the many people who apparently originally
> misunderstood what "SCHEDULED" meant, and used to set it to like, an
> appointment time.

Well, you can use it that way.
The point is: Scheduled items behave differently to timestamped items.
If you prefer the behaviour scheduling provides you with, go for it.

> I kind of miss how nice it was back when I misunderstood how events work
> (escept for all of those non-TODOs staying around forever on my
> agenda..) where I had a dedicated property for this, and pressing
> C-c C-s would always change that property.

I just did a quick check. 
It seems to me that timestamps within a property work.
So, if you prefer, you can set your timestamps in a property like this:

*  NEXT Task 2
   :LOGBOOK:
   :END:
   :PROPERTIES:
   :DATE:     <2011-04-12>
   :END:

If you want a convenient keybinding to set this property, this seems
to work:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(defun my-org-set-date ()
  "Set DATE Property via org-read-date."
  (interactive)
  (org-set-property "DATE" (concat "<"(org-read-date)">")))

(define-key org-mode-map (kbd "C-c C-S-s") 'my-org-set-date)
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Okay, there is still setting it in the agenda.
There are already functions doing special treatment for e.g. effort.
It should work to grab it and modify it to our needs ...

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(defun my-org-agenda-set-date ()
  "Set the DATE property for the current headline."
  (interactive)
  (org-agenda-check-no-diary)
  (org-agenda-show)   ;;; FIXME This is a stupid hack and should not be needed
  (let* ((hdmarker (or (org-get-at-bol 'org-hd-marker)
		       (org-agenda-error)))
	 (buffer (marker-buffer hdmarker))
	 (pos (marker-position hdmarker))
	 (inhibit-read-only t)
	 newhead)
    (org-with-remote-undo buffer
      (with-current-buffer buffer
	(widen)
	(goto-char pos)
	(save-excursion
	  (org-show-context 'agenda))
	(save-excursion
	  (and (outline-next-heading)
	       (org-flag-heading nil)))   ; show the next heading
	(goto-char pos)
	(call-interactively 'my-org-set-date)
	(end-of-line 1)))))

(define-key org-agenda-keymap (kbd "C-c C-S-s") 'my-org-agenda-set-date)
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Did some quick testing, it *seems* to work.
But I have no expertise in elisp (or programming for that matter), so
this is probably "wrong" in one way or the other :).

> What I'm saying I guess is:
>  - Is there a popular property name for when something should be
>    happening, in a non-TODO way?  I've thought of "OCCURANCE" but maybe
>    that isn't the best (I suspect not)
>  - Maybe if we formalize this property, we should make a command for it?
>    Maybe C-c C-S-o?
>  - It would be nice to formalize this so we could actually steer people
>    in the right direction in the docs.

Oh, this was not a "How can I do x?" mail, but a request to formalize
this in org core .... 

Nevermind ;)

Memnon