Re: proposal to have ignoreheading tags/properties

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Mark Edgington <edgimar@gmail.com> writes:

> In using org-mode, there is one problem that has always irked me (and
> is apparently also closely related to the FAQ "How do I ignore a
> headline?").  When I am writing something, I sometimes want to group
> things by concept or by work to be done, or any other number of
> groupings.  BUT I do not want these groupings to be part of the
> exported document itself.  In fact, I would like it to be as if the
> grouping did not exist at all (i.e. a headline that is ignored).
>
> The problem with using an ignored headline for grouping things is that
> it still does have an effect on exported document structure, in that
> all of the elements contained "inside / in the scope of" the ignored
> headline still keep their depth (one level deeper than the level of
> the ignored headline).
>
> What I want is for the nested items to have their levels all promoted
> by one, so that it's truly as if the ignored headline wasn't there at
> all, and that it invisibly wrapped around a group of items without
> requiring them to have a deeper level.  Perhaps this could be done by
> use of an "ignoreheading" and an "ignoreheadingpromote" tag (one
> promotes the level of contained items, another doesn't), or some
> equivalent set of properties that could be set on a headline.
>
> Would there be any chance that something like this could be built in
> to org-mode?  I think it would make it far more flexible in terms of
> organizing things, making this organization process orthogonal to the
> selection of sections/subsections of a document.

It looks like a groundswell for remove-andor-promote tags for headlines,
but for the sake of argument let me propose the use of blocks. It seems
to me that something like a "generic block" (a block that does nothing
but delete its begin/end delimiters on export) fits the use-case better:

#+BEGIN_BLOCK Here's a list of reasons why blocks make sense

1. They group together content that should go together, but don't
   constitute a part of document structure. They're a little like
   notecards in Scrivener

2. You can fold them like headlines, and re-order them with
   org-meta(up|down)

3. You could put arbitrary text after the begin block declaration, as if
   it were ignored headline text.

4. I can't think of any more reasons, except that this seems like the
   right "weight" for this kind of feature.

#+END_BLOCK

Anyway, just being argumentative...

E