Re: need file+function help

[John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 5:37 PM, Subhan Tindall
<subhan.tindall@rentrakmail.com> wrote:
> The ability I am looking forward here IS to find a location - it's just that
> I need a little more detailed control.
> For example, file+headline(or file+subheadline, or whatever) would find a
> specific headline in a file, & inserts the entry under it, creating it if it
> doesn't exist (IE * Notes)
> file+datetree acts the same, but creates bits of a datetree to get to the
> specific date.
> What I want is (somewhat) of a combination of the two:
> 1) find/create the datetree to get today's date
> 2) under this subtree, find/create headline
> 3) insert the entry under this headline.
> Ideally I'd like to grab a value using capture to specify the headline, but
> from what I gather that's not going to happen.  Nonetheless, I can live with
> specifying 1 template for each category headline I need:
> For a simple example:
> datetree+headline capture template for headline * Notes
> inserts entry into
> * 2013
> ** April
> *** 2013-04-09 Tuesday
> **** PPT111 Dev Ticket for new functionality
> ***** Log <2013-04-09> Worked on spec for this ticket
>        CLOCK: [2013-04-09 Tue 08:40]
>
> This simple extension would then give the ability to log in/out of the
> PPT111 ticket, with notes on what was worked on, and a simple CLOCKTAB line
> at the right level will bundle up all the time for a ticket in single
> entries.
>

I'm assuming from this that you'd like help creating such a capture
template? Would these help at all?
- http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2012-08/msg01164.html
- http://osdir.com/ml/emacs-orgmode-gnu/2012-08/msg00396.html

Those were some of of the more elaborate capture templates I've ever
created, though a lot of the discussion had to do with date formatting
specifically. From my usage of capture, I think you might have some
troubles if the headline you want to file under doesn't exist yet.
Could be wrong!

One option is from the capture entry template, instead of C-c C-c , do
C-c C-w to refile instead. Then just make sure you have =(setq
org-refile-allow-creating-parent-notes t)= in your config or Org will
error when you try to refile to a non-existent headline the first
time.


Let me know if that helps any...
John

> This functionality would also be useful for me as a student, with
> sub-headlines for classes where I could add notes, todos, etc.
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 4:09 PM, Bastien <bzg@altern.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Subhan,
>>
>> Subhan Tindall <subhan.tindall@rentrakmail.com> writes:
>>
>> > questions:
>> > 1) are the values gathered by capture available to the function
>> > specified for file+function, & if so what are their names?
>>
>> No.
>>
>> > 2) what is the general template for a function for use with
>> > file+function, cleanup, return values, etc that would be expected?
>>
>> The function is expected to find a location where to put the new
>> entry, not to return any specific value, and if it returns a value,
>> the value is ignored.  It can also act on the subtree at the location
>> it has found, but this is slightly abusing the feature I'd say.
>>
>> > 3) would it be better to extend datetree to datetree+headline for
>> > entries of this type? it seems like it a pretty usefully
>> > functionality to have (I can think of 2 or 3 instances i'd regularly
>> > use this just off the top of my head
>>
>> "datetree+headline" is improper, because a location in a datetree is
>> a headline... so maybe your best chance is to use (function ...) or
>> (file+function ...) and try to see if the function can interactively
>> prompt for the values you want and edit the location as you want.
>> But again, this goes beyond the purpose of function, which is to
>> find to location.
>>
>> --
>>  Bastien
>
>
>
>
> --
> Subhan Michael Tindall | Software Developer
> | smt@rentrakmail.com
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