Re: Categories

[Bastien <bzg@altern.org>]

Richard G Riley <rileyrgdev@googlemail.com> writes:

> Completion doesnt work for me. Possibly this is a result of using
> icicles? You just TAB to completion?

Can you please provide more details:

What version of Org-mode?  
What did you do?  
What did you expect?
What did you get instead?

> This might seem like an incredibly naive question, but with the
> concept of "general properties", where do TAGs fit in now?

TAGs are special properties.  They are special regarding the way you
access them (C-c C-c), the way you display them (flushright) and the 
way Org can process them (with specific search/sort queries.)

But in other respect, they are just "properties" of an entry.

Hope this might help you find the best use for tags.

> I am having difficulty seeing the best way to utilise the tools and
> would appreciate some wise words of guidance here.

For me a todo line gets associated with :

| a project           | CATEGORY     |
| a process state     | TODO keyword |
| an action-type      | tags         |
| a context of action | tags         |

My setting for tags is this:

#+TAGS:      { Read(r) Write(w) Code(c) }
#+TAGS:      Mail(m) Print(p)
#+TAGS:      { @HOME(H) @LAB(L) }
#+TAGS:      { @Online(O) @Offline(F) }

The first two lines are action-types.  

The two last lines are contexts.  The conventions I use are these: 1)
the keys for action-types are lower-case, the keys for contexts are
upper-case. 2) contexts comes with a leading "@" 3) the tags for
*physical* contexts are all capitalized, while those for notional
contexts are just first-letter capitalized.

The tags that I'm more likely to use are Read, Write or Code.  

A subset of my agenda views: 

(setq org-agenda-custom-commands
      '(("r" tags-todo "Read/NEXT" nil)
	("w" tags-todo "Write/NEXT" nil)
	("R" tags-todo "Read/NEXT|TODO" nil)
	("W" tags-todo "Write/NEXT|INPROGRESS" nil)))

Then I regularily check for something to read with "r" (meaning
something to read next) or "R" (including other TODO); or I check for
things that I have to write with "w" (the things I have to write next)
or "W" (including work in progress, which is likely to take more than 
on day.)

For the "Mail" an "Print" tags,  i use the normal C-c a m key, since I
don't use them that often.  

At the beginning I worried too much about having a consistent set of
tags.  For the example above, there is some overlap between Mail Write
and Code.  But you don't need to worry about that.  Just use the tags,
and progressively you will be able to get rid of useless one.

HTH,

-- 
Bastien