New package: ox-minutes [Please critique]

New package: ox-minutes [Please critique]

[Kaushal Modi]

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Hi all,

I have never published a package. I generally write elisp snippets embedded
in my config.

Here are my first attempts at a 'package' and defining a custom org export
backend.

The aim of this exporter to generate meeting minutes plain text that is
convenient to send via email.

- Unnecessary blank lines are removed from the final exported plain text.
- Header decoration and section numbers done in the default ASCII exports
is prevented.
- Also TOC and author name are not exported.

This is an ox-ascii derived backed for org exports.

This backend effectively sets the org-export-headline-levels to 0 and,
org-export-with-section-numbers, org-export-with-author and
org-export-with-toc to nil time being for the exports. That is equivalent
to manually putting the below in the org file:

    #+OPTIONS: H:0 num:nil author:nil toc:nil

This package has been tested to work with the latest version of org built
from the master branch ( http://orgmode.org/cgit.cgi/org-mode.git ) as of
Aug 10 2016.

You can try out the package by:
1. Cloning it from https://github.com/kaushalmodi/ox-minutes
2. Requiring it:
3. Exporting an org file using C-c C-e M M

I would love to get criticism on this... What did I miss? Bad coding
practices?

Thanks.

Kaushal
-- 

Kaushal Modi

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Re: New package: ox-minutes [Please critique]

[Oleh Krehel]

Kaushal Modi <kaushal.modi@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi all,
>
> I have never published a package. I generally write elisp snippets embedded in my config.
>
> Here are my first attempts at a 'package' and defining a custom org
> export backend.

Congrats on your first package! It will surely come in handy when
interacting with my less Emacs-enlightened colleagues. I recall one of
them writing very similar-looking notes in Microsoft Outlook. One or two
times I had to send them some notes, I actually did by hand the
transformation that `ox-minutes' now does.

> I would love to get criticism on this... What did I miss? Bad coding
> practices?

The coding looks fine. Just a suggestion: I think "\n" looks better than
a literal string newline.

It would be cool to have a regression test with:

    ./ox-minutes/ox-minutes-test.el
    ./ox-minutes/test_input.org
    ./ox-minutes/test_output.txt

Both test_input.org and test_output.txt could be moved from README.md.

regards,
Oleh

Re: New package: ox-minutes [Please critique]

[Kaushal Modi]

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On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 12:16 PM Oleh Krehel <oleh@oremacs.com> wrote:

> Congrats on your first package! It will surely come in handy when
> interacting with my less Emacs-enlightened colleagues. I recall one of
> them writing very similar-looking notes in Microsoft Outlook. One or two
> times I had to send them some notes, I actually did by hand the
> transformation that `ox-minutes' now does.
>

Yeah, I had to do that so many times by hand and I kept on thinking that
'some day' I will fix this.


> The coding looks fine. Just a suggestion: I think "\n" looks better than
> a literal string newline.
>

Strange, I assure you that I already tried that and it did not work. But it
DOES work. So that regexp probably had a lot of non-working components
earlier. I will fix this; I anyways did not like the literal newline :)

It would be cool to have a regression test with:
>
>     ./ox-minutes/ox-minutes-test.el
>     ./ox-minutes/test_input.org
>     ./ox-minutes/test_output.txt
>
> Both test_input.org and test_output.txt could be moved from README.md.
>

Good point. Learning to use ert is on my 'some day' list. I will eventually
get to it.

Thanks for the feedback!
-- 

Kaushal Modi

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