Dear Carsten,

This sounds like a very good solution.  I look forward to it being implemented.

Andrew

-- 

Andrew Swann | Associate Professor | Tel +45 871 55767 | swann@math.au.dk | http://home.math.au.dk/swann/ | Department of Mathematics, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 118, Bldg 1530, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark | Dept +45 871 50000 | Fax +45 8613 1769

From: Emacs-orgmode <emacs-orgmode-bounces+swann=math.au.dk@gnu.org> on behalf of Carsten Dominik <dominik@uva.nl>
Date: Friday, 16 August 2019 at 10:19
To: "Fraga, Eric" <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk>
Cc: Nick Dokos <ndokos@gmail.com>, Org mode <emacs-orgmode@gnu.org>
Subject: Re: [O] Bug: Description of org agenda columns format in manual not correct/misleading

Hi,

On Thu, Aug 15, 2019 at 9:50 AM Fraga, Eric <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

On Wednesday, 14 Aug 2019 at 15:57, Nick Dokos wrote:
> "Fraga, Eric" <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> writes:
>
>> I have this setting in my Emacs initialization:
>>
>> (setq org-agenda-overriding-columns-format "%5TODO %TIMESTAMP %40ITEM %LOCATION %TAGS")
>>
>> HTH,
>> eric
>
> Shouldn't you be using org-columns-default-format instead?

No because it's about setting the columns format for the agenda view
alone, not the format for normal org buffers.  My error was in using a
deprecated variable; the actual variable is
org-overriding-columns-format.

The OP's post was actually about the documentation (which I
misunderstood).

I have discussed this problem with Allen Li, who fixed a bug in the agenda column setting a while ago.

I think what is missing to make this more transparent is a variable `org-default-columns-format-for-agenda' which is a proper user option.  This option can be set in your init.el or through customize, and it will provide a default format for the agenda.  `org-overriding-columns-format should ONLY EVER be used in the local setting section of a custom agenda view.

This new variable is not available in master.

- Carsten