Re: feature request: show context in agenda

[Manish <mailtomanish.sharma@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 1:26 PM, Carsten Dominik wrote:
>
> On Nov 12, 2009, at 3:03 AM, Manish wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 6:06 AM, Samuel Wales wrote:
>>>
>>> In the agenda, it is difficult to find where you are in
>>> the hierarchy. I find that I have to switch to the outline,
>>> then scroll up, if I want to know what the parent headline
>>> is, or any ancestor.
>>>
>>> Others have proposed showing the parent headline, but that
>>> could clutter the agenda and will not show other ancestors.
>>>
>>> Here is a simple proposal: put the olpath of the current
>>> header in header-line-format.
>>>
>>> Then you always know where you are, without having to switch
>>> to the outline buffer.
>>
>> +10
>>
>> I proposed something similar six months ago.
>
> You did? I don't remember. Can you find the thread on gmane?

I could not locate that post on gmane at all!  Closest I could find
was Eraldo's response to my email.  But I found the email in Gmail
archive and am quoting it below.

,----
| MIME-Version: 1.0
| Received: by 10.110.53.12 with HTTP; Mon, 18 May 2009 20:01:00 -0700 (PDT)
| In-Reply-To: <2BA22C73-CD1F-4791-BA0C-E7112CABD4ED@gmail.com>
| References: <1e5bcefd0905151433v72384998ub908996d78dcbdb2@mail.gmail.com>
| 	 <2BA22C73-CD1F-4791-BA0C-E7112CABD4ED@gmail.com>
| Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 08:31:00 +0530
| Delivered-To: mailtomanish.sharma@gmail.com
| Message-ID: <e7cdbe30905182001j113ff356k5cf6446461444b16@mail.gmail.com>
| Subject: Re: [Orgmode] Show parent PROJECTS for an item
| From: Manish <mailtomanish.sharma@gmail.com>
| To: Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com>
| Cc: Marcelo de Moraes Serpa <celoserpa@gmail.com>, emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
| Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
| Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
|
|   On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 8:41 PM, Carsten Dominik wrote:
|   >
|   > On May 15, 2009, at 11:33 PM, Marcelo de Moraes Serpa wrote:
|   >
|   >> Hello list,
|   >>
|   >> I'd like to do a little modification to the code that grabs the
|   >> summary of items for the agenda view. For each item that has a
|   >> parent with a PROJECT type, I'd like org to render this parent in
|   >> a hierarchical, tree way, like this:.
|   >>
|   >> Let's say I search for a specific item using a regexp. This item
|   >> has three parents, which all are PROJECTS, it would show like
|   >> this:
|   >>
|   >>
|   >> PROJECT My project
|   >>  PROJECT My sub-project
|   >>    PROJECT My sub-sub-project
|   >>      NEXT Call Liz to check if the account has been created
|   >> :@call:@work:
|   >>
|   >> So, searched for Liz and got this specific item, but org then
|   >> would give me more context, showing me to which project it
|   >> belongs to. Not sure if it's already possible, but if not, would
|   >> be a great addition to support the GTD system, IMO :)
|   >
|   > The purpose of the flat agenda list is to be compact, and what you
|   > want would defeat that purpose.
|   >
|   > If you are working with a single file, a sparse tree might be the
|   > best alternative. If not, you could give follow mode in the agenda
|   > a try.
|   >
|
| Follow mode is fit for the purpose when you are _in_ Emacs but when
| you want to print and take your lists along then missing context can
| be confusing.  Would it be possible to encode the task hierarchy into
| the task display like so:
|
| ,----[ sample tree ]
| | * PROJECT Take over the world
| | ** SUBPROJ Make a plan
| | *** TODO Print a trillion dollars
| `----
|
| ,----[ sample todo list ]
| |    TODO Take over the world/Make a plan/Print a trillion dollars
| | or TODO Print a trillion dollars [Take over the world/Make a plan]
| | or [Take over the world/Make a plan] TODO Print a trillion dollars
| | or TODO [Take over the world/Make a plan] Print a trillion dollars
| | or TODO Print a trillion dollars\Make a plan\Take over the world
| `----
|
| Personally I prefer the last one most.  The number of characters added
| from each node, and/or the numbers of nodes added and/or the total
| length of todo item in agenda can be made configurable to limit the
| length of the agenda lines.
|
| At present, some of us try to be more descriptive when defining a task
| so as to identify the context from the task alone.  If this is
| implemented, we can try to be succinct instead.
|
| Of course, I do not know elisp nor do I understand Org internals so
| the idea might just be nonsense from an implementation perspective.
|
| Regards,
| --
| Manish
`----

Regards,
-- 
Manish