Re: Org Writer's room

[Matt Price <moptop99@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 3:39 AM, Rainer M Krug <r.m.krug@gmail.com> wrote:
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> On 06/12/12 16:51, Matt Price wrote:
>> On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 9:15 AM, Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 12/06/12 20:09 PM, Matt Price wrote:
>>>> On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 3:08 AM, Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> wrote:
>>>>> Matt Price <moptop99@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 7:44 PM, Alan L Tyree <alantyree@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> On 06/12/12 11:22, Rasmus wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Andrew Hyatt <ahyatt@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> This sounds like an interesting project.  My advice is to make a few screenshots
>>>>>>>>> that give people an idea what you are working towards. Of course, they could be
>>>>>>>>> completely fake, but it would be helpful to understand for people like me who
>>>>>>>>> haven't used Scrivener.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I would also like to see this.  It sounds nice when I read your description, but I
>>>>>>>> still don't fully appreciate the idea.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> –Rasmus
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'm also very interested. I haven't used Scrivener -- what features do you see as
>>>>>>> making org a *way* better writing environment?
>>>>>
>>>>> [...]
>>>>>
>>>>>> To start with I would like to just replicate this window structure, because it keeps
>>>>>> you focused on writing, while having the larger structure available if you feel the
>>>>>> need to flit around a bit.  The third screenshot shows a semi-fake, still very
>>>>>> primitive version of what I'd like to have.  (I haven't figured out a good way to do
>>>>>> the metadata yet).
>>>>>
>>>>> I *really* like the idea of having a right-hand pane available showing properties around
>>>>> the current point -- it could include properties from the PROPERTIES drawer, from the
>>>>> structure returned by `org-element-property', text properties, and maybe properties of
>>>>> the current headline parent. I'm sort of envisioning what you get from the "inspect
>>>>> element" command in Firefox.
>>>>>
>>>>> For the left-hand pane, org-toc and org-panel in the contrib directory (or even the
>>>>> org-goto interface) might provide some inspiration.
>>>>>
>>>>> Ugh, sounds like a lot of work.
>>>>>
>>>> those are 3 powerful tools I hadn't used before.  org-toc not working for me at the moment
>>>> though, there might be something wrong with my .emacs setup...
>>>
>>> Yeah, some of that's out of date. Actually, since Org looks like it will be slowly migrating
>>> over to a basis on org elements, that's probably a good direction to look.
>>> `org-element-parse-buffer' will return a data structure for the current buffer that would be
>>> ideal for creating a tree visualization.
>>
>> hmm, just looked at the output of that command and the data structures look like:
>>
>> (headline (:raw-value "The Function of Copyright" :begin 489 :end 610 :pre-blank 0 :hiddenp
>> outline :contents-begin 517 ...) (section (:begin 517 :end 610 :contents-begin 517
>> :contents-end 610 :post-blank 0 :parent #1)))
>>
>> Those integers are char numbers in the buffer -- would this list then have to be updated for
>> every character stroke?  Hmm, I also can pretty much see how to get each :raw-value and turn it
>> into text that's presented in a buffer... but I don't understand how to associate that text
>> with the existing headline in an org file.  Speedbar seems like a much easier option, but while
>> the org-mode parser is nowworking for me(yay!) I can't make the same-frame package work
>> (sr-speedbar)!  Gosh darn it!
>>
>> ANyway,  thanks eveyrone, I'm going to keep needing help on this so if you have more
>> suggestions please keep them coming..
>
> Looking forward to the right side of the three...
> As the left side is using existing packages, could you post the commands needed to make it work? I
> only have it on the right side, and I assume you are using hooks to start sr-speedbar?
>

I don't have the speedbar interface running properly yet (no time the
last couple of days).  sr-speedbar is not working right for me, so I
am tryng some code from emacswiki (which is also posted in various
places around the web):

http://emacswiki.org/emacs/SpeedBar#toc1

I'm noticing a few issues:

- at least on my machine, it's not easy to click on a heading that has
subheadings.  THe trick is probably to make some improvements to the
underlying org/speedbar integration.
- when speedbar is running in the same frame as other windows, it
isn't so good at determining where it should open new buffers.
Binding the clicks to my writers-room-pop-buffer function should fix
that.
- the builtin speedbar browsers are awesome, but I think it would be
better to have a stripped-down interfacd that only showed the project
you're working on. I guess the way to do that would be to extend
speedbr with a new major or minor mode.  (
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/speedbar/Major-Display-Modes.html#Major-Display-Modes
).  It doesn't look that ocmplicated but I need to learn a bunch
before I do it...

All the code I have (not much)  is still available at the github repo
I posted at the beginning of this thread,
https://github.com/titaniumbones/org-writers-room/

I tried adding some speedbar stuff but it's very very rough!  If you
feel like improving it -- that would be just super...  In any case go
ahead and try it ou.  It doesn't do much and I'm pretty sure it an't
do any harm to your files, but I would love some feedback.  Thanks,
Matt