Re: Why don't datetrees use timestamps?

[Nick Dokos <ndokos@gmail.com>]

Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org> writes:

> On 16 March 2015 at 16:52, Subhan Michael Tindall <SubhanT@familycareinc.org> wrote:
>
>     You can use a custom capture template and have timestamps of various sorts inserted.
>    
>     For example, I have one datetree I use that inserts a date/time stamp using %T (%t gives only date, not time)
>    
>     See the documentation for capture (hit C-c C C  to get into the customize interface then scroll down)
>
> ​ My question was about the datetree entry headings of the form "2015-03-16 Monday". These aren't controlled by the template. I was interested to know why these
> headings look very much like timestamps (and effectively are timestamps, though at the top level they mention just a year and at the second level just a year and a
> month), but aren't actual timestamps.
>
> Eric Fraga said "I don't think it would make sense for the headlines in the date-tree to have time stamps"; but my question is not why they don't have time stamps,
> but why they ARE not time stamps (purely in the formal sense: the information they contain is already effectively a time stamp, as far as I can see).
>

This is third-hand knowledge and guesswork on my part, but I think that
datetrees are used for things like journals: "that's what I did that
day".  Datetrees just give you a hierarchical structure of nodes for
easy navigation: you can look at your journal and open and close nodes
at will, so you can navigate to the date of interest. The fact that the
third-level headings look like timestamps is purely coincidental.

Timestamps are given to things that are going to appear in an agenda:
"that's what I have to do today, tomorrow or next week". They are
completely orthogonal to datetrees in that respect.

The stuff that ends up in your journal is stuff that (mostly) did not
appear in the agenda: all the little things that you did that day,
probably unplanned (otherwise they would be in the agenda!)

Not that the headings in a datetree couldn't be made into timestamps;
but that's not what people use datetrees for[fn:1]. The one thing that
would be facilitated if they *were* timestamps, would be clicking on one
and getting the day agenda for that long-gone day, so you could
reminisce about the other things that you did that day, that did not end
up in your journal. Maybe that's enough reason to make them
timestamps, but there are other (perhaps less convenient) ways
to do that.

Of course, I may be suffering from a failure of imagination: you might
be using datetrees in a completely different way, one where having the
heading be a timestamp is a very good idea, but I can't think of any:
if you *have* something in mind, do tell.

> I was hoping to discover the rationale for the design from a developer :)

You'll have to ask Carsten about it: he invented datetrees I believe (as
well as most of org), but he does not frequent org circles much these
days.

Footnotes:

[fn:1] Remember however my caveat about third-hand knowledge and
guesswork: I don't use datetrees.

Nick