Re: Simplifying the weekly agenda a tiny bit, howto?

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

François Pinard <pinard@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
>
>> First of all, if your event is a meeting, it should only be
>> timestamped, not deadlined or scheduled.  Then it will just show up
>> where it's supposed to, and not before (or after).
>
> How do I get it quickly rescheduled then, when it is a regular activity?
> I find fairly convenient using "t d" to push an activity at its next
> slot in the future.  Could I do something equivalent with mere time
> stamps?

Hmm, I hadn't tried that with repeating events. There are a pile of
commands for shifting timestamps/scheduled/deadline from the Agenda
(either ">", or variously-prefixed versions of "S-<right>" and
"S-<left>". Changing the date/time of any event applies the same
relative shift to all the events, which might not be what you want, but
then that would also be the case if you're using deadlines to represent
meetings.

If "t d" is your current solution, you're not actually re-scheduling
meetings, just canceling them, right? It's true there's not a lot of
flexibility in plain old repeating timestamps. Maybe use a SCHEDULED tag
instead of DEADLINE (which makes a little more semantic sense, and also
doesn't produce coming-up warnings), or else use
'org-clone-subtree-with-time-shift' to just create a whole new heading
for each meeting, with timestamps that can be adjusted individually.

>> It probably shouldn't even be a TODO.  Otherwise, scheduled TODOs show
>> up on their schedule, and deadlined TODOs show up on their deadline,
>> and also today's agenda, if you're coming up on the deadline.
>
> There are many Org commands able to find, display and otherwise handle
> TODOs.  If I stop using such keywords, wouldn't I give up the tools?
> Maybe there are ways to reformulate them all using other commands, but
> at fist, it would require some searching, and acquiring new habits,
> presuming that there are alternative ways for all such tools.

It does take a bit of fooling to make the best use of the tools
available... In this case I'd say Richard's right: tags are what you
should be using. They're just as easy to search for as TODOs, and
they're considerably more flexible: you can make them up on the fly, or
nest them in tag groups. The key nature of the TODO -- that you can
shift it among several linked states -- isn't really what you need here.

>> There are a host of variables [...]  Check out variables starting
>> org-agenda-skip-*, org-agenda-ignore-*, org-agenda-include-*,
>> org-deadline-*, org-scheduled-* [...] Hope that helps,
>
> Undoubtedly :-).  Thanks!
>
> François