org-capture question/suggestion

[Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org>]

Hi,

as already said, I really like the new org-capture interface.  But
there's one thing concerning the templates, which might be optimized a
bit.

I want to add certain information accessible with template escapes as
properties.  So as an example, I have a template like this:

 ("t" "TODO" entry
  (file "/home/horn/repos/org/remember.org")
  "* TODO %?\n  :PROPERTIES:\n  :created: %U\n  :link: %a\n  :END:\n  %i")

The creation date %U is always there, so that's no problem.  But the
link accessible with %a may be nil.  Then, I really don't want to have a
:link: property.  Currently, I simply delete that line before filing the
item.  That's a bit inconvenient, and that I have to deal with
indentation in the template is another inconvenience.  And it won't work
when my capture template doesn't create a new entry, but appends to an
existing one.  In that case, properties should be appended to existing
properties, too.

So what I would love to see was a possibility to have property escapes,
which use the property API and only add properties that have a value.
Then the property API would handle the correct indentation and
everything else.

Maybe, a good syntax would be %:propname:X, where X is one of the normal
escapes without the leading %.  Then I could write the template above
like that:

 ("t" "TODO" entry
  (file "/home/horn/repos/org/remember.org")
  "* TODO %?\n  %i %:created:U %:link:a")

Well, I don't really care about the syntax.  Maybe it's better to
specify properties outside the template, because they won't be inserted
at the exact position defined in the template anyway, especially if type
is not 'entry.  So how about something like that:

 ("t" "TODO" entry
  (file "/home/horn/repos/org/remember.org")
  "* TODO %?\n  %i"
  :properties (("created" "%U")
               ("link"    "%a")))

What do you think?

Bye,
Tassilo