Re: How to add entries to an org file, not diary

[Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com>]

Hi Stephen,

On Nov 6, 2009, at 4:16 PM, Stephen Eglen wrote:

> Dear all,
> If I'm visting an agenda (C-c a a) buffer, and want to add a diary  
> entry
> for a particular day, I can use org-agenda-diary-entry, bound to 'i'.
> This inserts an entry in my diary file.
>
> What I'd like to do is add the entry instead to an org file,
> e.g. 'agenda.org' where I currently store all diary-like entries.  Is
> that functionality available?  (Am trying to wean myself off diary
> files, after many years of using it...)

If you get the latest Org version from the git server, you can
configure the variable `org-agenda-diary-file' to point to your
"diary.org" file or any other Org-mode file.  This should be a
file dedicated for general appointments, anniversaries
etc.

Then `i' in the agenda will create new entries in that file.
Simple entries (day and block) will be placed into an outline
tree that is based on dates:  Top-level years, level 2 months,
level 3 days[1].  I have always wanted to have something
like this, so that it will be easy to archive old stuff!  So thanks
for giving me a reason to finally make it.

Right now I have implemented

i d   for day entries,
i b   for blocks,
i a   for anniversaries (which will be collected under a special
       heading "Anniversaries" in your `diary.org'
i j   To jump to the cursor date in the date tree

What else would be useful?

The same command will also be bound to the `i' key in the
calendar (calendar restart required), so you can make the same
kind of entries from the calendar - very convenient at times,
in particular for long blocks.

The basics of these new commands seem to work OK, but it
is quite possible that I have not yet thought this through
fully.  Let me know what I am missing, so that we can tweak it.

- Carsten

[1] If there is any entry in this file with a DATE_TREE property set,
the tree will be build under that entry.