Re: merging subtrees (in a syllabus)

[Adam Porter <adam@alphapapa.net>]

Hi Matt,

One potentially crazy idea would be to store each lab/discussion entry
in a named "#+BEGIN_SRC org" block, and use Babel <<anchors>> to merge
them in a final noweb SRC block.  Seems a bit recursive, but I guess you
could edit each org block with org-edit-special and escape the nesting.

Another possibility would be to leave them as they are now, but to use
sparse trees in combination with tags or properties to only display lab
or discussion entries.

Also, you may find org-tree-to-indirect-buffer useful.  I have the
impression that not many Org users are aware of it or how
powerful--might I even say, liberating--it is.  You can essentially edit
each subtree of your document as a separate document in its own buffer,
while behind the scenes it's all taking place in the source buffer.  If
you're interested in this, I could provide some more details and some
support functions that make it more useful.

> If it also comes with a thought about how to generate an org date
> objet form an initial seed and a session number, that's be fabulous
> too.

I just discovered this yesterday, and it seems relevant:

https://github.com/abo-abo/tiny

Apparently it can be used like this:

m\n8|**** TODO Learning from Data Week %(+ x 2) \nSCHEDULED: <%(date "Oct 7" (* x 7))> DEADLINE: <%(date "Oct 14" (* x 7))>

Which results in:

**** TODO Learning from Data Week 2
SCHEDULED: <2013-10-07 Mon> DEADLINE: <2013-10-14 Mon>
**** TODO Learning from Data Week 3
SCHEDULED: <2013-10-14 Mon> DEADLINE: <2013-10-21 Mon>
[...]

Hope this helps!

Adam