Re: Proposal: 'executable' org-capture-templaes

[Samuel Wales <samologist@gmail.com>]

i must be confused.  menus aside, you can currently capture and it
uses the org forest itself, so it is both crash-proof and snappy.  and
you can yakshave as much as you want, starting a capture while doing a
capture.  those were design goals.

you can even be in the middle of a capture, get distracted, navigate
around your forest, and find where you are in the middle of a capture.
goes with the original crash-proof and yakshave and snappy
use-original-buffer design goal.

so are we talking about menus then?  is there truly a need to make
/menu state/ persistent or yakshaveable?


On 6/6/22, Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/06/2022 22:07, Arthur Miller wrote:
>> Max Nikulin writes:
>>
>> After input from Ihor I agree that it isn't the best way, and was
>> able to refactor org-mks to create a menu where I can execute any lisp
>> form,
>> when it comes in a list like this : ("h" "hello-word" (message "Hello,
>> World")), where third element is just a lisp form. I have something like
>> this:
>
> This message is merely my opinion that you may disagree. I am not trying
> to prevent you from going forward.
>
>  From my point of view current `org-mks' is more general giving you
> opportunity to treat extra elements as you wish. A thin wrapper allows
> to evaluate 3rd element of returned list. You have not convinced me that
> built-in executable form is the essential feature.
>
>> (defun demo3 ()
>>    "Illustrate nested menus, unicode separator and alternative
>> decorator."
>>    (interactive)
>>    (let ((quick-menu-key-decorator-chars "<>")
>>          (quick-menu-vertical-separator ?─))
>>      (quick-menu
>>       ;; table
>>       '(("g" "Greetings")
>>         ("gh" "Hello, World!" (message "Hello, World!"))
>>         ("gb" "Bar" (message "Hello, Bar!")))
>>       ;; description
>>       nil
>>       ;; more tables
>>       '(("f" "Functions")
>>         ("ff" "Find File" (call-interactively #'find-file))
>>         ("fo" "Open File" (flet ((next-read-file-uses-dialog-p () t))
>>                             (call-interactively 'find-file))))
>>       '(("q" "Abort" (user-error "Abort"))))))
>
> It is tightly based on org-mks, but actually it is way to represent list
> of choices with some hints to possible hierarchy and accelerator keys.
> Quite similar list may be fed to completion read or represented as a
> hierarchical GUI menu. The only specific is "always visible" elements
> like "abort". When Ubuntu used Unity desktop their had a nice feature of
> searching in application menu.
>
> There should be an extension point that allows users to replace
> representation e.g. to improve accessibility.
>
>> DESCRIPTON is a property list containing following members:
> ...
>> :horizontal    when `t', if multiple menus are present they are rendered
>> from
>> left to right, otherwise from top to bottom.
>
> It may depend on whether a window created to display menu is tall and
> narrow or wide.
>
>> I have paramterized decorator character for shortcut keys as they appear
>> in the
>> buffer, org-capture uses "[]", as well as menu separator, which is
>> currently
>> hard-coded in org-capture,
>
> I agree that org-mks may have additional argument to specify menu
> decoration.
>
>> Exactly.  It is important that org-capture is one capture at the time so
>> people
>> don't mess their note files, agenda files etc.
>>
>>>                                                          Unsure if some
>>> intermediate persistent store would be an improvement.
>>
>> Not sure what you mean here, but I don't plan to change anything in
>> org-capture
>> itself, it should still be one-task at the time.
>
> Changing interface to less degree of blocking may be confusing for
> users. Capture template selection menu may be displayed in another frame
> hidden behind other application, on another monitor, on another virtual
> desktop, so invisible. So a user earlier distracted by something urgent
> may try to start another capture. Captures may be initiated from other
> applications using org-protocol.
>
> To avoid data loss while other capture is in progress, the data of next
> capture may be temporary saved to some place till the user pops it from
> the queue. I mentioned persistence since something may unexpectedly
> crash, so it should be possible to resurrect enqueued captures in next
> Emacs session.
>
>>> Likely nobody performed any steps toward `transient' as the interface,
>>> but due
>>> to such requests it would be nice to have possibility to switch between
>>> menu
>>> implementations.
>>
>> I am not building some generalized framework, as I said in my first
>> respone to
>> Ihor :-).
>
> I am not requesting for a framework, I mean API compatible with other
> frameworks to let user choose their preferred ones.
>
> So tunables to control decoration sounds interesting. I am in doubts
> concerning fixing some element as executable. Mode-map instead of
> minibuffer may be a great step to more convenient interface (it
> resembles help buffers), but may require more changes in functions that
> do actual job. From other messages on this list my impression is that
> API should be designed having in mind flexibility and other UI packages.
>
>
>


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