Thanks, Christian.  Please forgive my ignorance but what should I do with
the code?  I've not done anything more advanced than org-customize before.

Gez

On 11 October 2011 20:46, Christian Moe <mail@christianmoe.com> wrote:

> Hi, Gez,
>
>
> On 10/7/11 5:02 PM, Gez wrote:
>
>> What I'm imagining is a command executed on a headline to insert a
>> property into each of its children "fixing" the current order;
>> something like ":sorted:01", ":sorted:02"  etc.
>>
>
> I think this is a neat idea, and can see some uses for it for my own stuff.
> I've made a first pass below. Please test it and let me know how it works
> for you (and please *don't* test it on anything valuable without backing up
> first!).
>
> <snip>

>
> Code follows.

Yours,
> Christian
>
> #+begin_src emacs-lisp
>  (defun cm/org-store-outline-order (arg prop)
>    "Store the outline of the subtree of the entry at point by
>  setting the property PROP of each direct child entry to its
>  current position in the tree. With prefix ARG, store the position
>  of the whole subtree. The tree can be restored to the stored
>  outline by sorting on the property with `C-c ^ r'. Note that this
>  will only work properly on the order of each subtree; if headings
>  are demoted, promoted, or moved into different subtrees, the
>  result may or may not be nonsense, but it will be impossible to
>  restore the original order by sorting."
>    (interactive "P\nsProperty key (default OutlineIndex): ")
>    (if (string= prop "") (setq prop "OutlineIndex"))
>    (if (or (not (org-map-entries t (concat prop "={.}") 'tree))
>            (y-or-n-p "Property exists; overwrite? "))
>        (let* ((match (format "LEVEL%s%s"
>                              (if arg ">=" "=")
>                              (1+ (org-current-level))))
>               (counter 1)
>               (width (1+ (floor (log10 (length (org-map-entries t match
> 'tree))))))
>               (fstr (concat "%0" (number-to-string width) "d")))
>          (org-map-entries
>           '(progn
>              (org-set-property prop
>                                (format fstr counter))
>              (setq counter (1+ counter)))
>           match 'tree)
>          (message ""))))
> #+end_src
>