timestamps and work logging

[David O'Toole <dto@gnu.org>]

Hi Carsten. I have another modest proposal for you :-)

I notice that org-mode has a concept of timestamp ranges, and a
function to calculate the length of time in a given timestamp
range.

It seems to me that with a small amount of additional work, org-mode
could:

1. Provide a function org-clock-in, which lets you signal that you
   have started working on a particular task. This would start a
   timestamp range going on that task, so when you clock in on task
   Foo, you get

   ** TODO Foo
      WORK: <2006-06-06 Tue 06:33>--<>
      
2. Provide a function org-clock-out, which remembers where you last
   clocked in, and completes the timestamp range:

   ** TODO Foo
      WORK: <2006-06-06 Tue 06:33>--<2006-06-06 Tue 06:35>

3. Produce another timestamp range when you clock in again, thus
   recording all the time intervals when you worked on this task:

   ** TODO Foo
      WORK: <2006-06-06 Tue 06:33>--<2006-06-06 Tue 06:35>   
      WORK: <2006-06-06 Tue 06:39>--<>

4. Clock out of task A if you clock in to task B without manually
   clocking out of task A. 

5. Optionally display work time (i.e. no task completion) when
   log-mode is on in the Agenda buffer. 

6. When you call org-clock-total in a particular org-file, sum the
   time intervals for each task in the file and produce a line like
   
   TOTALWORK: 3:14 (3 hours, 14 minutes)

   (This would make it easy for me to scan the file and produce client
   bills from the output.) 

I originally looked at timeclock.el for this, and wrote a simple org
interface for it, but I want to keep the time logging information in
my org-files, next to each task description, and separated for each
client---not all bundled together in a huge ~/.timelog file.

What do you think? Does it sound like a lot of work? 

-- 
Dave O'Toole
dto@gnu.org