Org mode for meeting minutes

Org mode for meeting minutes

[Christian Egli]

Hi all

I'd like to revisit a very old thread[1] where Adam Spiers asks if there
is support in Org mode for

1. Allow *fast* production of meeting agendas and minutes, exportable in
   a good-looking legible format which non-org readers can digest.

2. Allow minutes to be taken as the meeting progresses, minimising the
   amount of work required after the meeting.

3. Allow actions to be captured and then automatically extracted into a
   simple tabulated report which clearly shows actions grouped by owner.

4. Track progress of actions *after* the minutes have been issued.

He goes on to say that org mode handles (1) and (2) just fine, but he
wasn't sure about (3) and (4).

His mail is from 2008 and a lot has happened in the mean time. I would
suggest that today (1) and (2) can be handled with normal org export or
even pandoc. Inline tasks[2] help a lot to add, well inline tasks. For (3)
and (4) he mentions a dynamic block that could collect all action items.

I never found that dynamic block he mentions, so I hacked one up (which
was suprisingly easy). I haven't packaged it but the gist of it is
below:

``` elisp
(require 'org)
(require 'dash)

(defun org-actionitems-extract-entry ()
  (-let* ((entries (org-entry-properties))
	  ((&alist "ITEM" "TODO" "DEADLINE") entries))
    (list ITEM TODO DEADLINE)))

(defun org-dblock-write:actionitems (params)
  (let ((match (or (plist-get params :match) "/+TODO")))
    (insert-before-markers "| What | Who | When |\n")
    (insert-before-markers "|-\n")
    (let* ((tasks (org-map-entries 'org-actionitems-extract-entry match))
	   (rows (-map (lambda (task)
			 (->> task
			      (-map (lambda (item) (or item "")))
			      (apply 'format "| %s | %s | %s |")))
		       tasks))
	   (table (string-join rows "\n")))
      (insert-before-markers table))
    (org-table-align)))
```
    
The idea is that you use type todos using the people involved at the
meeting. Below is an example how this could look:

``` org
#+title: Meeting minutes

#+TYP_TODO: Fred Sara Lucy Mike | DONE

** Present at meeting
- [X] Fred
- [X] Sara
- [X] Lucy

** Agenda
- Reports from the sub teams
- Discussion

** Notes
*** Reports from the sub teams
- The order has arrived
*************** Fred Check if the order is complete
DEADLINE: <2019-11-04 Mo>
*************** END
- The next talk is scheduled
*************** Mike Organize a speaker
DEADLINE: <2019-11-12 Di>
*************** END

* Actions
#+BEGIN: actionitems :match "/Fred|Sara|Lucy|Mike"
| What                           | Who  | When            |
|--------------------------------+------+-----------------|
| Check if the order is complete | Fred | <2019-11-04 Mo> |
| Organize a speaker             | Mike | <2019-11-12 Di> |
#+END:
```

Before I go on with this I'd like to know

1. Is the worg page[3] the state of the art in taking meeting minutes
   with org mode?
2. Is it worth packaging this code snippet or should I try to submit it
   to org mode proper?

Any thoughts on this or other ideas very welcome!

Thanks,
Christian

Footnotes: 
[1]  https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2008-02/msg00117.html
[2]  https://code.orgmode.org/bzg/org-mode/src/master/lisp/org-inlinetask.el
[3]  https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-meeting-tasks.html

Re: Org mode for meeting minutes

[Fraga, Eric]

On Thursday, 31 Oct 2019 at 15:03, Christian Egli wrote:
> His mail is from 2008 and a lot has happened in the mean time. 

Although a lot has happened in the meantime, I've not seen anything pass
by which addresses minutes of meetings and tracking actions.  I used to
use org to take minutes but haven't done so in a very long time
(advantage of having somebody else do it for me now ;-)).  What you've
done with an active dblock (and TODO states being the names of people!)
looks good and should definitely be put on Worg at the very least.

-- 
Eric S Fraga via Emacs 27.0.50, Org release_9.2.6-552-g8c5a78

Re: Org mode for meeting minutes

[Ken Mankoff]

Hello,

I think you can achieve that table with existing functionality.

(setq org-agenda-overriding-columns-format "%ITEM %TODO %DEADLINE")

And then agenda column view (C-c C-x C-c) shows a similar output.

I think similar outputs and methods could be used with :property: keywords too for adding follow-up dates to task, team-members, effort estimates, etc.

  -k.

Re: Org mode for meeting minutes

[John Kitchin]

You might see if there is functionality in org-secretary
https://github.com/yyr/org-mode/blob/master/contrib/lisp/org-secretary.el
(http://juanreyero.com/article/emacs/org-teams.html) that could help
with this.

It would be nice to integrate org-contacts in with something like this.


Christian Egli <christian.egli@sbs.ch> writes:

> Hi all
>
> I'd like to revisit a very old thread[1] where Adam Spiers asks if there
> is support in Org mode for
>
> 1. Allow *fast* production of meeting agendas and minutes, exportable in
>    a good-looking legible format which non-org readers can digest.
>
> 2. Allow minutes to be taken as the meeting progresses, minimising the
>    amount of work required after the meeting.
>
> 3. Allow actions to be captured and then automatically extracted into a
>    simple tabulated report which clearly shows actions grouped by owner.
>
> 4. Track progress of actions *after* the minutes have been issued.
>
> He goes on to say that org mode handles (1) and (2) just fine, but he
> wasn't sure about (3) and (4).
>
> His mail is from 2008 and a lot has happened in the mean time. I would
> suggest that today (1) and (2) can be handled with normal org export or
> even pandoc. Inline tasks[2] help a lot to add, well inline tasks. For (3)
> and (4) he mentions a dynamic block that could collect all action items.
>
> I never found that dynamic block he mentions, so I hacked one up (which
> was suprisingly easy). I haven't packaged it but the gist of it is
> below:
>
> ``` elisp
> (require 'org)
> (require 'dash)
>
> (defun org-actionitems-extract-entry ()
>   (-let* ((entries (org-entry-properties))
> 	  ((&alist "ITEM" "TODO" "DEADLINE") entries))
>     (list ITEM TODO DEADLINE)))
>
> (defun org-dblock-write:actionitems (params)
>   (let ((match (or (plist-get params :match) "/+TODO")))
>     (insert-before-markers "| What | Who | When |\n")
>     (insert-before-markers "|-\n")
>     (let* ((tasks (org-map-entries 'org-actionitems-extract-entry match))
> 	   (rows (-map (lambda (task)
> 			 (->> task
> 			      (-map (lambda (item) (or item "")))
> 			      (apply 'format "| %s | %s | %s |")))
> 		       tasks))
> 	   (table (string-join rows "\n")))
>       (insert-before-markers table))
>     (org-table-align)))
> ```
>
> The idea is that you use type todos using the people involved at the
> meeting. Below is an example how this could look:
>
> ``` org
> #+title: Meeting minutes
>
> #+TYP_TODO: Fred Sara Lucy Mike | DONE
>
> ** Present at meeting
> - [X] Fred
> - [X] Sara
> - [X] Lucy
>
> ** Agenda
> - Reports from the sub teams
> - Discussion
>
> ** Notes
> *** Reports from the sub teams
> - The order has arrived
> *************** Fred Check if the order is complete
> DEADLINE: <2019-11-04 Mo>
> *************** END
> - The next talk is scheduled
> *************** Mike Organize a speaker
> DEADLINE: <2019-11-12 Di>
> *************** END
>
> * Actions
> #+BEGIN: actionitems :match "/Fred|Sara|Lucy|Mike"
> | What                           | Who  | When            |
> |--------------------------------+------+-----------------|
> | Check if the order is complete | Fred | <2019-11-04 Mo> |
> | Organize a speaker             | Mike | <2019-11-12 Di> |
> #+END:
> ```
>
> Before I go on with this I'd like to know
>
> 1. Is the worg page[3] the state of the art in taking meeting minutes
>    with org mode?
> 2. Is it worth packaging this code snippet or should I try to submit it
>    to org mode proper?
>
> Any thoughts on this or other ideas very welcome!
>
> Thanks,
> Christian
>
> Footnotes:
> [1]  https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2008-02/msg00117.html
> [2]  https://code.orgmode.org/bzg/org-mode/src/master/lisp/org-inlinetask.el
> [3]  https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-meeting-tasks.html


--
Professor John Kitchin
Doherty Hall A207F
Department of Chemical Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
412-268-7803
@johnkitchin
http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu

@name-tags instead of TODO keywords to assign people (was: Org mode for meeting minutes)

[Karl Voit]

* Christian Egli <christian.egli@sbs.ch> wrote:
>     
> The idea is that you use type todos using the people involved at the
> meeting. Below is an example how this could look:
>
> ``` org
> #+title: Meeting minutes
>
> #+TYP_TODO: Fred Sara Lucy Mike | DONE

I'd challenge the decisions on using TODO keywords for people
although the Org manual also suggests to do so.

TODO keywords are single classification. This means that you are not
able to assign more than one person to a task. I'm using @tags for
the same purpose which allows me to assign tasks to more than one
person and keep TODO keywords independent to the person. For
example, when you resolve a task, you lose the information who was
assigned to the task.

Therefore, I'd use:

* Meeting

** TODO Prepare the demo     :@Fred:
** STARTED Contact customer  :@Sara:
** TODO Work on the document :@Fred:@Lucy:@Mike:

More on that on
https://karl-voit.at/2019/09/25/categories-versus-tags/ including an
elisp snippet I'm using to filter according to @name-tags.

YMMV. HTH.

-- 
get mail|git|SVN|photos|postings|SMS|phonecalls|RSS|CSV|XML into Org-mode:
       > get Memacs from https://github.com/novoid/Memacs <
Personal Information Management > http://Karl-Voit.at/tags/pim/
Emacs-related > http://Karl-Voit.at/tags/emacs/

Re: @name-tags instead of TODO keywords to assign people (was: Org mode for meeting minutes)

[Tim Cross]

+1. This is how I do it as well. This approach makes it easier to not
only see what tasks have been assigned to what people, it also provides
a way to generate a custom agenda (report) showing what tasks each has
and what the state is for each task.

Tim
Karl Voit <devnull@Karl-Voit.at> writes:

> * Christian Egli <christian.egli@sbs.ch> wrote:
>>     
>> The idea is that you use type todos using the people involved at the
>> meeting. Below is an example how this could look:
>>
>> ``` org
>> #+title: Meeting minutes
>>
>> #+TYP_TODO: Fred Sara Lucy Mike | DONE
>
> I'd challenge the decisions on using TODO keywords for people
> although the Org manual also suggests to do so.
>
> TODO keywords are single classification. This means that you are not
> able to assign more than one person to a task. I'm using @tags for
> the same purpose which allows me to assign tasks to more than one
> person and keep TODO keywords independent to the person. For
> example, when you resolve a task, you lose the information who was
> assigned to the task.
>
> Therefore, I'd use:
>
> * Meeting
>
> ** TODO Prepare the demo     :@Fred:
> ** STARTED Contact customer  :@Sara:
> ** TODO Work on the document :@Fred:@Lucy:@Mike:
>
> More on that on
> https://karl-voit.at/2019/09/25/categories-versus-tags/ including an
> elisp snippet I'm using to filter according to @name-tags.
>
> YMMV. HTH.


-- 
Tim Cross

Re: Org mode for meeting minutes

[Bastien]

Hi Christian,

this is nice indeed.  I added a link to your email in Worg:
https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/index.html#org7df3a04

Thanks,

-- 
 Bastien

Re: Org mode for meeting minutes

[Christian Egli]

Hi all

I'm picking up this thread again since I think I have solved the issue
for myself. I do use org-mode for meeting minutes now. Thanks to the
input from this list I managed to solve the outstanding issues such as
tabular reports of action items.

I wrote a blog post summarizing my findings which you can find here
https://egli.dev/posts/using-org-mode-for-meeting-minutes/

Hope that helps
Christian

"Fraga, Eric" <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> writes:

> On Thursday, 31 Oct 2019 at 15:03, Christian Egli wrote:
>> His mail is from 2008 and a lot has happened in the mean time. 
>
> Although a lot has happened in the meantime, I've not seen anything pass
> by which addresses minutes of meetings and tracking actions.  I used to
> use org to take minutes but haven't done so in a very long time
> (advantage of having somebody else do it for me now ;-)).  What you've
> done with an active dblock (and TODO states being the names of people!)
> looks good and should definitely be put on Worg at the very least.

-- 
Christian Egli
Swiss Library for the Blind, Visually Impaired and Print Disabled
Grubenstrasse 12, CH-8045 Zürich, Switzerland

Re: Org mode for meeting minutes

[Eric S Fraga]

Thank you for the blog post.  Very useful.
-- 
: Eric S Fraga via Emacs 28.0.50, Org release_9.3.6-433-g4b2628

Re: Org mode for meeting minutes

[Axel Kielhorn]

> Am 23.03.2020 um 10:36 schrieb Christian Egli <christian.egli@sbs.ch>:
> 
> Hi all
> 
> I'm picking up this thread again since I think I have solved the issue
> for myself. I do use org-mode for meeting minutes now. Thanks to the
> input from this list I managed to solve the outstanding issues such as
> tabular reports of action items.
> 
> I wrote a blog post summarizing my findings which you can find here
> https://egli.dev/posts/using-org-mode-for-meeting-minutes/
> 
> Hope that helps
> Christian

It really did.

I’m adjusting my template right now to include the :match

Thanks for sharing that information!

Axel

Re: Org mode for meeting minutes

[Carsten Dominik]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1545 bytes --]

Hi Christian,

very useful blog post indeed, thank you.

Thanks for finding the :match parameter and for pointing out that it is not
documented in the manual.

I have fixed that in org-manual.org.

Carsten

- Carsten

On Mon, Mar 23, 2020 at 10:37 AM Christian Egli <christian.egli@sbs.ch>
wrote:

> Hi all
>
> I'm picking up this thread again since I think I have solved the issue
> for myself. I do use org-mode for meeting minutes now. Thanks to the
> input from this list I managed to solve the outstanding issues such as
> tabular reports of action items.
>
> I wrote a blog post summarizing my findings which you can find here
> https://egli.dev/posts/using-org-mode-for-meeting-minutes/
>
> Hope that helps
> Christian
>
> "Fraga, Eric" <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> writes:
>
> > On Thursday, 31 Oct 2019 at 15:03, Christian Egli wrote:
> >> His mail is from 2008 and a lot has happened in the mean time.
> >
> > Although a lot has happened in the meantime, I've not seen anything pass
> > by which addresses minutes of meetings and tracking actions.  I used to
> > use org to take minutes but haven't done so in a very long time
> > (advantage of having somebody else do it for me now ;-)).  What you've
> > done with an active dblock (and TODO states being the names of people!)
> > looks good and should definitely be put on Worg at the very least.
>
> --
> Christian Egli
> Swiss Library for the Blind, Visually Impaired and Print Disabled
> Grubenstrasse 12, CH-8045 Zürich, Switzerland
>
>
>

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Re: Org mode for meeting minutes

[Pankaj Jangid]

Christian Egli <christian.egli@sbs.ch> writes:
> I'm picking up this thread again since I think I have solved the issue
> for myself. I do use org-mode for meeting minutes now. Thanks to the
> input from this list I managed to solve the outstanding issues such as
> tabular reports of action items.
>
> I wrote a blog post summarizing my findings which you can find here
> https://egli.dev/posts/using-org-mode-for-meeting-minutes/

Thanks for this really useful blog post.

I have an off-topic query though: How do you right align tags?

Re: Org mode for meeting minutes

[Timm Lichte]

Just for your amusement: I've developed a very different but effective 
way of taking minutes with org-mode that uses just lists and 
enumerations. I have been using this solution for more than a year on a 
daily basis and I'm really happy with it (and colleagues don't 
complain). Speed, simplicity and readability for non-emacsers is 
critical in my job, so the solutions you are proposing would be overkill.

You can have a look at the style and code here:

   https://github.com/timmli/org-minutes-dev

Any feedback is greatly appreciated. But keep in mind that the code is 
not polished at all -- this is a hobby project of an elisp dilettante.

Best,
Timm


Am 23.03.20 um 10:36 schrieb Christian Egli:
> Hi all
> 
> I'm picking up this thread again since I think I have solved the issue
> for myself. I do use org-mode for meeting minutes now. Thanks to the
> input from this list I managed to solve the outstanding issues such as
> tabular reports of action items.
> 
> I wrote a blog post summarizing my findings which you can find here
> https://egli.dev/posts/using-org-mode-for-meeting-minutes/
> 
> Hope that helps
> Christian
> 
> "Fraga, Eric" <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> writes:
> 
>> On Thursday, 31 Oct 2019 at 15:03, Christian Egli wrote:
>>> His mail is from 2008 and a lot has happened in the mean time.
>>
>> Although a lot has happened in the meantime, I've not seen anything pass
>> by which addresses minutes of meetings and tracking actions.  I used to
>> use org to take minutes but haven't done so in a very long time
>> (advantage of having somebody else do it for me now ;-)).  What you've
>> done with an active dblock (and TODO states being the names of people!)
>> looks good and should definitely be put on Worg at the very least.
> 

Re: Org mode for meeting minutes

[Nick Dokos]

Pankaj Jangid <p4j@j4d.net> writes:


> I have an off-topic query though: How do you right align tags?
>
>
>

,----
| org-tags-column is a variable defined in ‘org.el’.
| Its value is -120
| Original value was -77
| 
|   You can customize this variable.
| 
| Documentation:
| The column to which tags should be indented in a headline.
| If this number is positive, it specifies the column.  If it is negative,
| it means that the tags should be flushright to that column.  For example,
| -80 works well for a normal 80 character screen.
| When 0, place tags directly after headline text, with only one space in
| between.
`----

-- 
Nick

"There are only two hard problems in computer science: cache
invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors." -Martin Fowler

Re: Org mode for meeting minutes

[Christian Egli]

Hi Timm

Timm Lichte writes:

> Just for your amusement: I've developed a very different but effective
> way of taking minutes with org-mode that uses just lists and
> enumerations. I have been using this solution for more than a year on
> a daily basis and I'm really happy with it (and colleagues don't
> complain). Speed, simplicity and readability for non-emacsers is
> critical in my job, so the solutions you are proposing would be
> overkill.

This is really interesting! I can see that you are very efficient with
this. I think my solution is more using the standard org-mode
infrastructure, I don't define any export for example.

> You can have a look at the style and code here:
>
>   https://github.com/timmli/org-minutes-dev

If I understand correctly you are defining some kind of extra list
markup (is something a task or a decision, etc) and the you wrote a
custom exporter that produces fancy LaTeX for the minutes (well, if I
understand correctly it really is a custom exporter that generates
org-mode and then LaTeX from there).

I don't quite understand how the LaTeX works. Is this some kind of two
column layout or do you keep the action item markers and the assignees
in the margin? Can you post the produced LaTeX?

> Any feedback is greatly appreciated. But keep in mind that the code is
> not polished at all -- this is a hobby project of an elisp dilettante.

It would be good to package this. The code would get more usage and
you'd get more feedback.

Thanks
Christian

--
Christian Egli
Swiss Library for the Blind, Visually Impaired and Print Disabled
Grubenstrasse 12, CH-8045 Zürich, Switzerland

Re: Org mode for meeting minutes

[Pankaj Jangid]

Nick Dokos <ndokos@gmail.com> writes:

>> I have an off-topic query though: How do you right align tags?
> ,----
> | org-tags-column is a variable defined in ‘org.el’.
> | Its value is -120
> | Original value was -77
> | 
> |   You can customize this variable.
> | 
> | Documentation:
> | The column to which tags should be indented in a headline.
> | If this number is positive, it specifies the column.  If it is negative,
> | it means that the tags should be flushright to that column.  For example,
> | -80 works well for a normal 80 character screen.
> | When 0, place tags directly after headline text, with only one space in
> | between.
> `----

Thanks Nick.

Re: Org mode for meeting minutes

[Eric S Fraga]

On Monday, 23 Mar 2020 at 21:03, Timm Lichte wrote:
> You can have a look at the style and code here:
>
>   https://github.com/timmli/org-minutes-dev

This is also very nice!

I wish I'd had either of these solutions when I used to take
minutes... I know have somebody take minutes for me when I chair
meetings. ;-)

-- 
: Eric S Fraga via Emacs 28.0.50, Org release_9.3.6-433-g4b2628

Re: Org mode for meeting minutes

[Eric S Fraga]

*now

-- 
: Eric S Fraga via Emacs 28.0.50, Org release_9.3.6-433-g4b2628

Re: Org mode for meeting minutes

[Bob Newell]

I'll second (nth) all the compliments. Your work is not only
day to day useful but is a great mini-tutorial on the usage of
a previously undocumented org-mode feature that is highly
useful.

-- 
Bob Newell
Honolulu, Hawai`i
- Via Gnus/BBDB/Org/Emacs/Linux

Re: Org mode for meeting minutes

[Diego Zamboni]

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This is such a great thread. Thanks everyone for your examples and ideas!
I'll be using some of these for sure for my notes.

--Diego


On Wed, Mar 25, 2020 at 6:57 PM Bob Newell <bobnewell@bobnewell.net> wrote:

>
> I'll second (nth) all the compliments. Your work is not only
> day to day useful but is a great mini-tutorial on the usage of
> a previously undocumented org-mode feature that is highly
> useful.
>
> --
> Bob Newell
> Honolulu, Hawai`i
> - Via Gnus/BBDB/Org/Emacs/Linux
>
>

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Re: Org mode for meeting minutes

[Timm Lichte]

Hi Christian,

Am 24.03.20 um 11:04 schrieb Christian Egli:
> Hi Timm
> 
> Timm Lichte writes:
> 
>> Just for your amusement: I've developed a very different but effective
>> way of taking minutes with org-mode that uses just lists and
>> enumerations. I have been using this solution for more than a year on
>> a daily basis and I'm really happy with it (and colleagues don't
>> complain). Speed, simplicity and readability for non-emacsers is
>> critical in my job, so the solutions you are proposing would be
>> overkill.
> 
> This is really interesting! I can see that you are very efficient with
> this. I think my solution is more using the standard org-mode
> infrastructure, I don't define any export for example.

Glad you find it interesting. I think both ways of taking notes have 
their merits and use cases. In small productive project meetings, I'd 
rather use more of the org-mode infrastructure. When there is a larger 
event with changing participants and its really important to document 
and keep track of what is going on, simple annotated lists fare better 
in my experience.

>> You can have a look at the style and code here:
>>
>>    https://github.com/timmli/org-minutes-dev
> 
> If I understand correctly you are defining some kind of extra list
> markup (is something a task or a decision, etc) and the you wrote a
> custom exporter that produces fancy LaTeX for the minutes (well, if I
> understand correctly it really is a custom exporter that generates
> org-mode and then LaTeX from there).

Yes, I'm basically extending the syntax for descriptions and overlaying 
it with some convenient font-lock. My custom exporter pushes everything 
in a temporary buffer and replaces the minutes notation with LaTeX 
expressions and then starts the regular org-export. This probably looks 
awkward but gives me full flexibility.

> I don't quite understand how the LaTeX works. Is this some kind of two
> column layout or do you keep the action item markers and the assignees
> in the margin? Can you post the produced LaTeX?

The LaTeX template builds on the article documentclass and basically 
puts some of the item types also on the regular margin with \marginnote 
from the marginnote package.  Some of the important types are also shown 
in the outline using \addcontentsline.

The LaTeX document is just a list of sections with nested itemize 
environments. One item would look like this:

     \item \ActionTag{Peter}{::} \ActionTagMargin{Peter}Something to do.

I've pushed the TeX file of the example to the repository. Hope this 
makes it clearer.

>> Any feedback is greatly appreciated. But keep in mind that the code is
>> not polished at all -- this is a hobby project of an elisp dilettante.
> 
> It would be good to package this. The code would get more usage and
> you'd get more feedback.

I'm really hesitant to make this a MELPA package right away, if this is 
what you mean. The font-lock and everything is really individual and 
non-generic. But I'll think about it.

Best,
Timm

> 
> Thanks
> Christian
> 
> --
> Christian Egli
> Swiss Library for the Blind, Visually Impaired and Print Disabled
> Grubenstrasse 12, CH-8045 Zürich, Switzerland
> 

Re: Org mode for meeting minutes

[Christian Egli]

Hi Timm

Timm Lichte writes:

> Glad you find it interesting. I think both ways of taking notes have
> their merits and use cases. In small productive project meetings, I'd
> rather use more of the org-mode infrastructure. When there is a larger
> event with changing participants and its really important to document
> and keep track of what is going on, simple annotated lists fare better
> in my experience.

I think you are probably right. When taking notes quickly your approach
without having to fidget with Tasks is probably faster. I just did not
want to stray too far off plain org-mode notation.

>> If I understand correctly you are defining some kind of extra list
>> markup (is something a task or a decision, etc) and the you wrote a
>> custom exporter that produces fancy LaTeX for the minutes (well, if I
>> understand correctly it really is a custom exporter that generates
>> org-mode and then LaTeX from there).
>
> Yes, I'm basically extending the syntax for descriptions and
> overlaying it with some convenient font-lock. My custom exporter
> pushes everything in a temporary buffer and replaces the minutes
> notation with LaTeX expressions and then starts the regular
> org-export. This probably looks awkward but gives me full flexibility.

Well, it might look weird, but I think the idea is good. TBH, I'm not
sure if there is another (programatic) way to derive from an existing
exporter.

> The LaTeX document is just a list of sections with nested itemize
> environments. One item would look like this:
>
>     \item \ActionTag{Peter}{::} \ActionTagMargin{Peter}Something to do.
>
> I've pushed the TeX file of the example to the repository. Hope this
> makes it clearer.

Ah, yes, this makes it much clearer. I really like this.

> I'm really hesitant to make this a MELPA package right away, if this
> is what you mean. The font-lock and everything is really individual
> and non-generic. But I'll think about it.

I understand. Now that I think of it it might be better to package the
LaTeX commands into a package on CTAN. I looked at the various LaTeX
minutes packages and so far yours seems almost the nicest.

Thanks
Christian

--
Christian Egli
Swiss Library for the Blind, Visually Impaired and Print Disabled
Grubenstrasse 12, CH-8045 Zürich, Switzerland

Re: Org mode for meeting minutes

[Adam Spiers]

On Thu, 31 Oct 2019 at 14:04, Christian Egli <christian.egli@sbs.ch> wrote:
> Hi all
>
> I'd like to revisit a very old thread[1] where Adam Spiers asks if there
> is support in Org mode for
>
> 1. Allow *fast* production of meeting agendas and minutes, exportable in
>    a good-looking legible format which non-org readers can digest.
>
> 2. Allow minutes to be taken as the meeting progresses, minimising the
>    amount of work required after the meeting.
>
> 3. Allow actions to be captured and then automatically extracted into a
>    simple tabulated report which clearly shows actions grouped by owner.
>
> 4. Track progress of actions *after* the minutes have been issued.

Wow, this makes me feel old! ;-)

Sorry for chiming in late - only just noticed this thread.

> He goes on to say that org mode handles (1) and (2) just fine, but he
> wasn't sure about (3) and (4).
>
> His mail is from 2008 and a lot has happened in the mean time. I would
> suggest that today (1) and (2) can be handled with normal org export or
> even pandoc. Inline tasks[2] help a lot to add, well inline tasks. For (3)
> and (4) he mentions a dynamic block that could collect all action items.
>
> I never found that dynamic block he mentions, so I hacked one up (which
> was suprisingly easy). I haven't packaged it but the gist of it is
> below:

[snip]

I have no doubt that your modern solution is much better than my ancient
hack, but just for the record, the latter can be found here:

https://github.com/aspiers/emacs/blob/master/.emacs.d/init.d/as-gtd.el#L79-L117

Thanks a lot for re-raising this and subsequently writing a very nice blog
post about it too!

Cheers,
Adam

P.S. I recently discovered an exceptionally good service to aid
with capturing information from meetings:

   https://otter.ai/

Sadly it is proprietary, and the speech recognition is sophisticated
enough that I doubt that any FLOSS alternative will appear any time
soon :-(

Re: Org mode for meeting minutes

[Alexander Adolf]

Hello Adam, All,

Adam Spiers <orgmode@adamspiers.org> writes:

> [...]
>> His mail is from 2008 and a lot has happened in the mean time. I would
>> suggest that today (1) and (2) can be handled with normal org export or
>> even pandoc. Inline tasks[2] help a lot to add, well inline tasks. For (3)
>> and (4) he mentions a dynamic block that could collect all action
>> items.

I have used this suggestion very successfully for my own purposes to
implement (3) and (4):

https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-meeting-tasks.html

Inline tasks are an element here, too. It also features a function to
extract all assigned actions and collect them in one place. Not a table
though, but in exchange for keeping them as headings, they can appear in
agenda views etc.

Fully agree that (1) and (2) are fully covered by org export these days,
btw.

Just my two cents anyway.

>> I never found that dynamic block he mentions, so I hacked one up (which
>> was suprisingly easy). I haven't packaged it but the gist of it is
>> below:
>
> [snip]
>
> I have no doubt that your modern solution is much better than my ancient
> hack, but just for the record, the latter can be found here:
>
> https://github.com/aspiers/emacs/blob/master/.emacs.d/init.d/as-gtd.el#L79-L117
> [...]

Thanks for sharing your code. It would seem to me that this can be very
usefully combined with the worg tutorial I am pointing at above, to
create a workflow.


Cheers,

  --alexander