Re: Org Capture Menu cannot be fully viewed

[pietru@caramail.com]

> If you care to share a slightly bigger picture view, particularly about
> the structure of the data you are trying to capture (and/or, your
> workflow) we could likely come up with something that would work much
> better for you than a capture template, at least in this particular
> case.

Most agencies, universities, museums and archaeological organizations use
standard forms for recording sites. Generally speaking these are used but
with a couple of caveats.  First, there are occasions when a standard form
may not call for recording enough data or the right kinds of data to satisfy
particular needs.  Then there are Exclusive Surveys (Incomplete coverage,
portions of the project are excluded) and Unsystematic Surveys (done without
a specific plan, methods at varied level of intensity; coverage random,
opportunistic, or intuitive). In many instances, previous work would have
been done, so people would want to quickly skip entries.

The plan for Org-Mode Capture is primarily for such Exclusive and Unsystematic Surveys
where we do not necessarily use standard forms.  I'm not sure if you capture the drift
concerning unsystematic surveys.  Most times I cannot tell you exactly what people in
the field came up with.  The pace can be rapid and some could be working in challenging
conditions.  The plan is for the Crew Chief to make a quick template, and which could
change each day.  maintain and review notebooks and records and overseeing quality
control is done daily.  It is customary to split the day.  One of the best ways we
improve survey efficiency is to anticipate bottlenecks and invent creative logistical
solutions right in the field.

The long template situation then occurs.  You can access better than myself as you
know what org and org-capture can do and what not.  I briefly reported on what we
found problematic in practice.  But we're at the beginning of this, and would
likely report  on other things as we progress.  Still, most things are likely
to be done by the "Institute for Technologies applied to Cultural Heritage (itabc)".

Nevertheless, we see some aspects where your scheme can be improved to cater for more
serious work.  Emacs is quite good software.

Hope my comments helped somewhat.

Pietru





> Sent: Sunday, December 13, 2020 at 4:16 AM
> From: "TRS-80" <lists.trs-80@isnotmyreal.name>
> To: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Org Capture Menu cannot be fully viewed
>
> On 2020-12-12 21:08, pietru@caramail.com wrote:
> > Here is one version of a template
> >
> > (setq capture-template-investigation-type '(
> >
> >  ("a" "Historic Background Research Site Evaluation/Testing" entry
> >   (file "~/histr/archaeol.org")
> >   "* Site_Type: %?\n %T\n")
> >
> > [...]
> >
> >  ("u" "Remote Sensing" entry
> >   (file "~/histr/archaeol.org")
> >   "* Site_Type: %?\n %T\n") ))
> >
>
> Are there any more to these templates you did not show?
>
> Because, (and unless I am missing something) what I see are essentially
> all the same (and quite simple).  You would end up with something like
> the following in your target file (with the cursor ending up at the x):

> #+begin_example
>
> * Site_Type: x
> [2020-12-12 Sat 21:58]
>
> #+end_example
>
> In fact I don't even see where the type name ends up in the result?
>
> If all my assumptions above are true, I think you would probably be
> better served with a simple completing-read (or similar) function to
> select the "Investigation Type" from a list and then simply insert that
> along with a timestamp.  Which it will take you longer to reply to this
> email and confirm than it would take me to write such a function.  :)
>
> Benefit of that way also removes possibility of typos in the type name.
>
> In fact, the above could even be done with something as simple as
> Yankpad[0].
>
> I have no idea what your workflow looks like, or where this data ends
> up.  However, thinking further, I would imagine it might even be helpful
> to set one or more Org properties[1] for things like "Investigation
> Type" (along with some other things I could speculate like "Location"
> etc.).  But all of that depends on even more things I don't know about.
>
> If you care to share a slightly bigger picture view, particularly about
> the structure of the data you are trying to capture (and/or, your
> workflow) we could likely come up with something that would work much
> better for you than a capture template, at least in this particular
> case.
>
> Cheers,
> TRS-80
>
> [0] https://github.com/Kungsgeten/yankpad
> [1] https://orgmode.org/manual/Properties-and-Columns.html
>
>