Re: How about lifting the limit of 35 tasks in org-clock-history?

[Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl>]

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On 2018-09-06, at 16:18, Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:
>
>> I decided to put a warning about this in the docstring in my patch.  My
>> assumption was that this is enough.  If a user wants to change the
>> default, he will most probably see the docstring and will have to
>> actively ignore the warning.
>
> I don't think this is enough. As you put it, it instills doubt without
> explaining anything. Why 35? Why "may not work"? What "may not work"?

Agreed.  I attach a patch with a more verbose docstring.

It is perhaps still not ideal - in particular, the warning is not
visible in the Customize interface - but I do not think this is a big
deal.  My line of thinking is that:

- if a user wants to change this setting, they will either look up the
  docstring and understand the limitation (btw, even the built-in way
  works for org-clock-history-length as high as 76 or so, provided you
  have a really high frame), or

- use Customize, which is potentially a trouble - but in that case,
  I would assume that the user fiddles with org-clock-history-length
  because they clock in many tasks, and then they will see that the list
  in the *Clock Task Select* buffer is too long anyway, and dial the
  setting down.

An alternative could be to change the hard-coded 35 in the code into yet
another variable, say, org-clock-history-max-length, and set it to 35.
Still, if a user wants to increase org-clock-history-length beyond 35
(or whatever this could be changed to), it is IMHO the /current/
behavior which is really confusing, and introducing a cap on the cap
would only make things worse.

WDYT?

--
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

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From bd5c4b7f3afe6a906b91e7f0bd33e2842fcf8656 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl>
Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2018 07:53:42 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] Lift the artificial limit on the clock history length.

The default limit of 35 was hard-coded, and was especially annoying
when using an alternative way of selecting from history,
e.g. https://github.com/unhammer/org-mru-clock.
---
 lisp/org-clock.el | 7 +++++--
 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/lisp/org-clock.el b/lisp/org-clock.el
index 9819fcff2..71ed99f69 100644
--- a/lisp/org-clock.el
+++ b/lisp/org-clock.el
@@ -156,7 +156,10 @@ state to switch it to."
 	  (symbol :tag "Function")))
 
 (defcustom org-clock-history-length 5
-  "Number of clock tasks to remember in history."
+  "Number of clock tasks to remember in history.
+Clocking in using history works best if this is at most 35, in
+which case all digits and capital letters are used up by the
+*Clock Task Select* buffer."
   :group 'org-clock
   :type 'integer)
 
@@ -534,7 +537,7 @@ cannot be translated."
 
 (defun org-clock-history-push (&optional pos buffer)
   "Push a marker to the clock history."
-  (setq org-clock-history-length (max 1 (min 35 org-clock-history-length)))
+  (setq org-clock-history-length (max 1 org-clock-history-length))
   (let ((m (move-marker (make-marker)
 			(or pos (point)) (org-base-buffer
 					  (or buffer (current-buffer)))))
-- 
2.19.0