Drawers for plain old stuff

Drawers for plain old stuff

[Alan E. Davis]

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I finally got drawers to work to hide some plain old stuff that is too
massive to be in the way all the time.  Is it me, or are drawers somewhat
capricious?    I had a drawer working, then moved more stuff into it, and it
cannot find the :END: line anymore.  So here are a few questions.

  - Can I have two drawers by the same name in a file
  - What kind of information is forbidden in a drawer (that will not enable
the finding of the :END: line)?
  - Can I make up names for Drawers on the fly?  Maybe a regular expression
name would be configured?
  - Are blank lines anethema to drawers?
  - Is there a size limit?

Thank you, as I think this is a great feature.  Org-mode is becoming more
and more interesting as I begin to understand some of the complexities.

Alan

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Re: Drawers for plain old stuff

[Carsten Dominik]

On May 3, 2008, at 11:19 AM, Alan E. Davis wrote:

> I finally got drawers to work to hide some plain old stuff that is  
> too massive to be in the way all the time.  Is it me, or are drawers  
> somewhat capricious?    I had a drawer working, then moved more  
> stuff into it, and it cannot find the :END: line anymore.  So here  
> are a few questions.
>
>  - Can I have two drawers by the same name in a file

Yes.

>
>  - What kind of information is forbidden in a drawer (that will not  
> enable the finding of the :END: line)?

You cannot nest drawers, a drawer ends at the first :END: line, the  
end must
be before the next headline.

>  - Can I make up names for Drawers on the fly?  Maybe a regular  
> expression name would be configured?

You can globally define the drawers using the variable `org-drawers'.
Or you can have a

#+DRAWERS: CLOCK PROPERTIES HIDETHIS HIDETHAT TOOBIG TOOUGLY

line in the buffer.  Just press C-c C-c after changing
the line and you are good do go.

There is currently no way to define a regular expression for this.
Possible, but you would need to come up with a convincing
use case before I would implement this.

>  - Are blank lines anethema to drawers?

No.

>  - Is there a size limit?

No.

However, the drawer cannot contain a headline, i.e. a line starting with
one or several stars followed by a space character.  Most likely,
this is what was causing you problems?


- Carsten

> Thank you, as I think this is a great feature.  Org-mode is becoming  
> more and more interesting as I begin to understand some of the  
> complexities.
>
> Alan
>
> _______________________________________________
> Emacs-orgmode mailing list
> Remember: use `Reply All' to send replies to the list.
> Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode

Re: Drawers for plain old stuff

[Alan E. Davis]

> the drawer cannot contain a headline, i.e. a line starting with one or 
> several stars followed by a space character. Most likely, this is what 
> was causing you problems? 
Exactly.

A case I can think of---perhaps not convincing?---for regular expression of drawer names is a file with many pasted in, lengthy notes or data sets.  So as to be able to distinguish them without opening them, one might wish to title them:

    :DATA-PROFILE1:

    :DATA-PROFILE2X:

    :DATA-TRANSECT_A:

    :DATA-SALINITY-2008-04-29:

An extremely simple regular expression would be "DATA.*" .  One can argue, convincingly, that each data set would best be stored in a file, and could be linked to.  

I did have two sets of calendars from 1984 and 1985 that were not huge, but were in the way.   I can as easily entitle each with a headline, then brace them in :CACHE: drawers.  

You have convinced me, but I hope I would not bore you by asking you for comments about this.

Thank you very much for your helpful answer, verifying what I suspected from experiments.  

Alan

Re: Drawers for plain old stuff

[Carsten Dominik]

On May 5, 2008, at 3:29 PM, Alan E. Davis wrote:

>
>> the drawer cannot contain a headline, i.e. a line starting with one  
>> or several stars followed by a space character. Most likely, this  
>> is what was causing you problems?
> Exactly.
>
> A case I can think of---perhaps not convincing?---for regular  
> expression of drawer names is a file with many pasted in, lengthy  
> notes or data sets.  So as to be able to distinguish them without  
> opening them, one might wish to title them:
>
>   :DATA-PROFILE1:
>
>   :DATA-PROFILE2X:
>
>   :DATA-TRANSECT_A:
>
>   :DATA-SALINITY-2008-04-29:
>
> An extremely simple regular expression would be "DATA.*" .  One can  
> argue, convincingly, that each data set would best be stored in a  
> file, and could be linked to.
> I did have two sets of calendars from 1984 and 1985 that were not  
> huge, but were in the way.   I can as easily entitle each with a  
> headline, then brace them in :CACHE: drawers.
> You have convinced me, but I hope I would not bore you by asking you  
> for comments about this.

Of course, not, I always like to get feedback and new ideas.

As for your example, I do think that headlines with a drawer below  
them would be just as useful and efficient in this case.  Seems that  
you agree, so for now: no regexp for drawer names.  But I put it on my  
list, maybe now that you suggested it, I will actually find a use for  
this.

Thanks.

- Carsten

Re: Drawers for plain old stuff

[Daniel J. Sinder]

On 05/05/2008 06:29 AM, Alan E. Davis wrote:
> 
>> the drawer cannot contain a headline, i.e. a line starting with one or 
>> several stars followed by a space character. Most likely, this is what 
>> was causing you problems? 
> Exactly.
> 
> A case I can think of---perhaps not convincing?---for regular expression 
> of drawer names is a file with many pasted in, lengthy notes or data 
> sets.  So as to be able to distinguish them without opening them, one 
> might wish to title them:
> 
>    :DATA-PROFILE1:
> 
>    :DATA-PROFILE2X:
> 
>    :DATA-TRANSECT_A:
> 
>    :DATA-SALINITY-2008-04-29:
> 
> An extremely simple regular expression would be "DATA.*" .  One can 
> argue, convincingly, that each data set would best be stored in a file, 
> and could be linked to. 
> I did have two sets of calendars from 1984 and 1985 that were not huge, 
> but were in the way.   I can as easily entitle each with a headline, 
> then brace them in :CACHE: drawers. 
> You have convinced me, but I hope I would not bore you by asking you for 
> comments about this.

Perhaps a simpler solution here is to use the ARCHIVE tag, e.g.,

* DATA-PROFILE1       :ARCHIVE:
* DATA-PROFILE2X      :ARCHIVE:
* DATA-TRANSECT_A     :ARCHIVE:
* DATA-SALINITY-2008-04-29  :ARCHIVE:

This is especially useful if you already have these lines as 
headlines (as you've indicated above) and just want to get them out 
of the way, even when doing visibility cycling.  Just do C-c C-x C-a 
on each headline you want to hide.

Dan