Re: Task time limit

[Bastien <bzg@altern.org>]

"Sebastjan Trepca" <trepca@gmail.com> writes:

> For example, "check the feed reader" would be set to 20 minutes. I
> would clock-in the task, go and check the reader and after 20 mins,
> alarm would go off, reminding me that I should start doing something
> else.

Nice idea, I gave it a shot.

I advised `org-clock-in' so that each time I am clocking in a new task,
a new appointment is triggered.  `my-org-appt-add' can also be called
interactively. 

;; Make sure you have a sensible value for `appt-message-warning-time'
(defun my-org-appt-add (&optional n)
  "Add an appointment for the Org entry at point in N minutes."
  (interactive)
  (save-excursion
    (org-back-to-heading t)
    (looking-at org-complex-heading-regexp)
    (let* ((msg (concat (match-string-no-properties 4) 
			" *GAME OVER*"))
	   (ct-time (decode-time))
	   (appt-min (+ (cadr ct-time) (or n 20)))
	   (appt-time ; define the time for the appointment
	    (progn (setf (cadr ct-time) appt-min) ct-time)))
      (appt-add (format-time-string  
		 "%H:%M" (apply 'encode-time appt-time)) msg)
      (if (interactive-p) (message "New appointment for %s" msg)))))

(defadvice org-clock-in (after org-appt-add-after-clock-in activate)
  "Add an appointment after clocking in a task."
  (my-org-appt-add))

Maybe another idea is to bind (progn (org-clock-in) (my-org-appt-add))
to a key in org-agenda-mode-map, since advising `org-clock-in' is a bit
too much IMO.  Or we could use some kind of filtering to decide whether
clockin in an entry should trigger a new appointment.

Anyway, that's just a quickstart, let me know if this is useful.

-- 
Bastien