Re: Converting lists to todo items and back

[Carsten Dominik <C.Dominik@uva.nl>]

Hi Bernt,

this is a relative specializes application, for example you want the  
items to be turned into, not just outline headings, but also TODO  
entries.

Org has these:

C-c *      can turn an item into a headline.

However, the heading will always be a subheading of the nearest  
heading above,
so to convert your list, you should start from te end.


C-c -      can turn an headline into an item

`C-c -' will also take an active region and turn each line into an item.

My personal solution fo things like this usually is  keyboard macro.
For example, in this case

>
> ,----[ from this ]
> | * New Task
> |   - [ ] item 1
> | 	detail goes here
> | 	- more detail
> | 	- blah
> |   - [ ] item 2
> | 	More detail here
> | 	
> | 	end of detail
> |   - [ ] item 3	
> `----


I would position the cursor in "* New Task" line and then type:

C-x (            ; start keyboard macro
C-s ] RET        ; search forward to "]"
C-SPACE          ; set the mark
C-a              ; beginning of line
C-w              ; kill region
** TODO          ; Type new headline starter
C-x )            ; End kbd macro

And then type `C-x e' as often as necessary.
You can even do `C-u 200 C-x e' to get 200 repetitions in one go.

Once you have a feeling for how to write macros so that they will
safely do things, and safely position the cursor in the location
where you want it to start the next repetition, this is a really
efficient way of doing things.

If you keep doing the exact same conversion all the time,
yes, write a special command.

HTH

- Carsten