Re: overloading of internal priority calculations in agenda

[Samuel Wales <samologist@gmail.com>]

if my opinion is worth anything [perhaps not much here :]], i like
your proposals and the idea of being able to re-sort an existing
agenda assuming that is your goal.

i don't use any priority sorting except in user-customizable but it
makes sense to decouple them for those who do.  and i frequently want
to differently sort an existing agenda view.


On 12/22/20, Adam Spiers <orgmode@adamspiers.org> wrote:
> Hi again,
>
> On Wed, Dec 02, 2020 at 02:20:53PM +0000, Adam Spiers wrote:
>>Hi all,
>>
>>I'm currently working on adding a feature to org-agenda which allows
>>manual ordering of entries in combination with the existing automatic
>>ordering (as dictated by `org-agenda-sorting-strategy').
>>
>>During my investigations I noticed that while `org-get-priority' converts
>>[#B] style cookies into a numeric priority which is a multiple of
>>1000, further adjustments are made in functions like
>>`org-agenda-get-scheduled' before adding this numeric priority as a
>>text property on the entry:
>>
>>    'priority (if habitp (org-habit-get-priority habitp)
>>                (+ 99 diff (org-get-priority item)))
>>
>>In this case `diff' refers to the number of days between now and when
>>the item was scheduled.  A slightly different calculation is made in
>>`org-agenda-get-timestamps':
>>
>>    (org-add-props item props
>>      'priority (if habit?
>>                    (org-habit-get-priority (org-habit-parse-todo))
>>                  (org-get-priority item))
>>
>>I further noticed that this overloading of the internal priority by
>>including timestamp and habit data causes disruption to the behaviour
>>I imagine most users would expect from `org-agenda-sorting-strategy'.
>>For example, if you have `priority-down' as the first entry in the
>>`agenda' section and `category-keep' as the second, then differences
>>in the SCHEDULED timestamp are included in the priority calculation
>>and can therefore prevent sorting of two adjacent [#B] items by
>>category.  This seems like a bug to me, or at least breaks the
>>Principle of Least Surprise.
>
> [snipped]
>
>>Given that `org-agenda-sorting-strategy' now supports all manner of
>>sorting criteria, many of which are time-sensitive, I would like to
>>know if there is any reason not to remove this overloading of the
>>priority calculation, i.e. decoupling it to depend purely on the
>>result of `org-get-priority' and `org-habit-get-priority'?
>>
>>If fact, perhaps we could go one step further and add support for new
>>habit-priority-{up,down} sorters to `org-agenda-sorting-strategy', so
>>that the priority-{up,down} sorters sort purely by the priority cookie
>>and nothing else?
>
> Gently bumping this as I didn't get any replies yet.  I would like to
> continue working on a solution, but obviously don't want to waste time
> on something which would be rejected.
>
> If it is considered important to preserve the exact behaviour
> currently offered by `org-agenda-sorting-strategy' then I would
> propose the following:
>
> - Keep the existing priority-{up,down} which combine priority cookies
>    with timestamp data and the result from `org-habit-get-priority',
>    but probably also deprecate it and remove it from the default value.
>
> - Introduce new priority-cookie-{up,down} sorters which operate purely
>    on [#A] and [#1] style priority cookies and nothing else.
>
> This would facilitate decoupling of the sortable criteria whilst
> remaining backwards compatible.
>
> Does this sound reasonable?  I am keen to proceed very soon (ideally
> over the Xmas break).  I have already written some new ert tests for
> `org-agenda-sorting-strategy' which would be included in any submitted
> patches.
>
> Thanks!
> Adam
>
>


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