Re: Using org-mode for Research and Notetaking

[Bastien <bzg@altern.org>]

Hi Florian,

Florian Beck <abstraktion@t-online.de> writes:

> A couple of questions and observations, first impressions really:
>
>  2. Tags are SLOW (no doubt due to my 8.5M file). Completion takes
>  minutes. I fixed that by adding all my (hundreds of) tags to
>  `org-tag-alist' and restricting capture to »%g«, checking only the
>  current file. `org-id-find' is slow as well and so will be property
>  completions, I guess. How about caching the data and update on saving
>  an org-agenda file?

We might consider this.  

I doubt updating on saving is the right thing to do -- people tend to
save very often, and for solving problems like yours, it will be as slow
as the current interface.

We need to be more clever in defining the update cycle for caches, and
this depends on _what_ the cache is containing.

>  3. By default, tags cannot contain spaces or commas. I rectified that
>  with an ugly hack in `org-set-tags-to', which replaces spaces with
>  ?\x2008 (punctuation space), and setting it to word syntax. Also, many
>  long tags display ugly. How about showing only the first twenty
>  characters and show the rest via help echo?

You will need to live with it for now.

>  4. muse-mode has this nice feature that it easily allows you to define
>  your own <tags> like
>  <i-am-learning-kanji-so-better-display-this-big>…</…> or
>  <a-citation-the-way-i-like-it>…</…>; not only for export but also for
>  fontification. Can I do something similar in org-mode?

What do you mean?

What I can think of are "tag aliases": for example, the tag ":code:"
would be an alias for ":code python lisp:".

The buffer would display the alias.

Tag search would match the expanded version.

This adds a semantic layer for tags, so maybe there are complexities
I cannot think of right now, but I think it might be interesting.

What do you think?

>  5. According to the manual »TODO items are an integral part of the
>  notes file«. I like that, but I do not find it so. TODO items are
>  headings which I find somewhat confusing: My files are either articles
>  to be (with the appropriate headlines) or notes where headlines usually
>  formulate the topic the note is about. Todo items, on the other hand,
>  would be »clarify the paragraph«, »check what X says about Y«, »add
>  more sources«, etc. As it is TODOs are not integrated but stand out,
>  breaking the structure of the file. How about allowing TODO items in
>  comments? This would seem much more natural to me: a TODO item should
>  not be part of your text but disappear when it is done.

As suggested, you want to check inline tasks.

I really don't like the current syntax for inline tasks, I would much
prefer something like special TODO keywords:

* !TODO This would be an inline task, not a headline

But perhaps I'm missing something about why the current inline task
syntax is useful.  I'd be interested in hearing more by people who are
actually using them...

Thanks for your input!

-- 
 Bastien