Re: [O] Support for a and p suffix for morning/afternoon scheduling
On Fri, 25 May 2012 01:45:14 -0400, Tom wrote: I use the scheduling prompt very often and I usually give times in 8pm/9am/etc. format, because they are conveniently short to type. Today it occured to me the m is unnecessary, because a and p already gives the necessary info. Could we also support 8a and 9p format for times like 8am and 9pm, so that the m does not have to be typed when scheduling? It's unambiguous, this form is not used for other things AFAIK, so we could easily support this shorter form too. Here is a pedantic excursion through the ambiguity of time... 12a and 12p are ambiguous, as are 12am and 12pm. Which is noon, and which is midnight? Standards differ. I generally favor, in English, the unambiguous use of noon and midnight, or 12 noon and 12 midnight. Unfortunately those terms do not fit into a scenario of abbreviation. Furthermore, midnight itself is ambiguous unless rendered as or 2400. Does "midnight Thursday" refer to the start of Thursday, or to its end? See this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight One might suggest 12n for noon and 12m for midnight, but this conflicts madly with prior use of abbreviations borrowed from Latin, where 12m is meridies (noon) and 12n is noctis (midnight). 12m, noon, is the origin of the "m" in "am" and "pm" : ante meridiem, post meridiem, for before noon and after noon. We probably have little choice but to adopt the obvious standard, "look at your digital clock," in which (contrary to some published standards) 12:00 AM is midnight and 12:00 PM is noon.
Re: [O] Efficiency of Org v. LaTeX v. Word
On Fri, 26 Dec 2014 23:27:37 -0500, Nick Dokos wrote: Anyway, color me deeply suspicious of the "study". Indeed! The study touches only a few of the inherent difficulties in document production. Its major flaw is that it draws any conclusions at all recommending that authors produce documents one way or another. Personally I am always disappointed when someone requests a document in MS Word format, because that means I'll have to fire up Libre Office and shove my text through it, rather than using whatever other system I happen to have been using. I do not believe that I currently own a system with genuine MS Word. As well as having insufficient control of variables, and a flawed understanding of what is involved in "document preparation," the study also has a marginally small sample size. Any study for any purpose that presents "statistics" with sample sizes smaller than 30 is immediately suspect. I won't even begin to address the misinterpretation of correlation as causation that appears in the "softer" sciences, nor their necessity for sample sizes far larger than 100, nor the tendency in some fields to mistake a time series as a set of samples. MS Word works extremely well for "one-off" small papers. Little investment of effort is required for a naive person to produce adequate results, and as every user of emacs knows, that's pretty much the opposite of emacs. On the other hand, MS Word has historically been a terrible tool for producing large documents, or documents that are to be maintained by a group of people, or over several years or decades. Handling Word's "Master Document" provision without being crippled by corrupted documents is an art form unto itself. The standard advice among experienced users of Word has always been, "Don't Use Master Documents!" When a group of people are all editing versions of a document, any attempt to use standard formatting in Word requires substantial effort to prevent naive contributers from reformatting outside the established styles, or even breaking all the styles. Furthermore, Word documents are in general not amenable to incremental version control as commonly used by coding teams. My conclusions? If your paper is trivial and you are under pressure to produce it quickly, then MS Word might be the best tool. Established journals should attempt to allow contributions in more than one format, and restriction to MS Word format is a bad idea, no matter how much some people like the apparent ease-of-use that MS Word provides. Attempting to extend the "study" to include org mode would be a waste of effort.
Re: [O] What is the URL of orgmode license evidence
On Fri, 30 Aug 2013 09:35:13 -0400, James Kang wrote: I know orgmode is under GPL but my search didn't turn up anything clear from orgmode.Org. I need this official information for an access. :-( Thanks Do these help? http://orgmode.org/manual/index.html#Top http://orgmode.org/w/?p=org-mode.git;a=blob_plain;f=lisp/ob-plantuml.el;hb=HEAD
Re: [O] Org Tutorials need more structure
On Mon, 30 Sep 2013 13:01:57 -0400, Eric S Fraga wrote: but I'm sure somebody else will think something is missing I'll admit that I've only dabbled in org mode thus far, but here's what I see as lacking in the tutorial documentation: 1. Non-video presentations for beginners. Some of us are (for one reason or another) badly set up to use video. Perhaps our network connection is slow, or our system is flaky and crashes with video. Or perhaps we only have five or ten minutes at a time to study. Or perhaps we are mostly trying to learn from hard copy we've printed out. A few of us might even be blind. 2. Goal-oriented presentations. Instead of telling us, "The XX widget allows you to do the YY operation," we might be hoping to see, "To accomplish ZZ (for instance, task scheduling), do something like this: (neat example with pointers to syntax)" The user will hope to see examples, even annotated examples. Sometimes negative examples: "DON'T try it this way... It seems right, and it's alluring, but ultimately it won't work, and you'll never figure out what's wrong." There ought to be discussions of why we should think of the problem THIS WAY and not THAT WAY. It may be that there are portions of the existing docs that cover everything I see as deficient, and I've just not found them. Perhaps a pointer to LOOK HERE FIRST is needed for those docs. I'll end with a quotation from a leader in a club to which I once belonged: "Yes, I can see how you might think that's a problem. How would you like to CHAIR THE COMMITTEE to solve that for next year's convention?" Perhaps I'm volunteering!
Re: [O] Stackoverflow in regexp matcher
On Wed, 03 Feb 2016 06:19:43 -0500, Nicolas Goaziou
wrote:
"Loris Bennett" writes:
re-search-forward("^[^%]*usepackage.*{biblatex}" nil t)
This is a pathological regexp. [^%] is anything but a percent sign, so
it can contain newline characters. Basically [^%]* can match an entire
buffer if it doesn't contain any %.
I think the regexp used in `reftex-using-biblatex-p' should be
"^[^%\n]*usepackage.*{biblatex}"
Here's a link about the extreme difficulty of detecting pathological
regular expressions:
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-May/035916.html
The author analyses the exponential not-found situation for (x+x+)+y and
then suggests that for larger expressions, "... no more than 1 programmer
in 1000 has even a vague idea how to start looking for such problems."
Re: [O] exported table has text overflowing off the pdf page
On Mon, 25 Apr 2016 08:18:09 -0400, Sharon Kimble wrote: I'm running into problems exporting tables into latex with a 2-column 3-row table with a large amount of text to go into the cells, but when its exported the text is taking over and overflowing off the pdf page. How can I have the text stay within the table boundaries please, with the second column having fixed boundaries when its exported please? Could you perhaps show us an example?
Re: [O] Clocking work time vs. office time
On Fri, 29 Apr 2016 08:08:38 -0400, Loris Bennett wrote: Eric S Fraga writes: On Friday, 29 Apr 2016 at 09:25, Marcin Borkowski wrote: However, this does not help with my main issue: tracking /time in office/. Not /time in office working/, mind you. I'd like to have a report like this (I mean information, not formatting): * Office time: 2:00 ** Task 1/Project A: 0:30 ** Task 2/Project B: 0:45 * Home time: ** Task 1/Project A: 1:15 ** Task 2/Project B: 0:30 So not only time spent on actual work on various tasks/projects, but also time /spent physically in the office/. I would suggest that the office time simply be the sum of the times of all headlines within that sub-tree? If you need something to mop up times which are not allocated to a specific task within the office hierarchy, create a sub-headline called "misc" or some such? Or am I missing something more fundamental? For me the problem would be just checking in and out of "misc". If I forget once, then my /time in the office/ would be incorrect. Personally, I need to keep track of /time in the office/ for my employer. Tracking time actually spent doing tasks planned with Org would be nice for me personally, but as I can't currently have two clocks running, I don't do this. Have not tested this, but what about running two separate sessions of emacs? It would certainly work if using two separate machines or two separate logins on one machine. Should be able to ssh or ctrl-alt-F1 to a different identity. Merge the two reports into one later with easy custom code.
Re: [O] org todos on paper?
On Thu, 27 Feb 2014 20:23:26 -0500, Peter Salazar wrote: I keep meeting people who say they started getting more things done more efficiently once they started printing out their tasks lists, so they can have the experience of seeing the list on paper and, more importantly, the satisfaction of crossing an item off on the page. Does anyone have a workflow they're happy with that involves printing out their org-mode todo lists? Exactly. My to-do items are mostly physical activities related to taking care of farm animals, rather than things I'm doing on my computer. It makes little sense to try to follow a list on a laptop or smartphone when walking back and forth in mud, or when picking up items at the farm-supply store. I update my to-do items occasionally in emacs, but as much as I've loved using emacs for nearly 40 years, it's not my constant companion outdoors in the weather, or when handling horses or shearing sheep. A printed piece of paper in my pocket is much easier to use, and little harm is done if it falls into the stock tank or gets trampled by livestock.
Re: [O] org todos on paper?
On Fri, 28 Feb 2014 05:44:52 -0500, Thorsten Jolitz wrote: Its just a matter of time and the machine you use for shearing sheeps will be a kind of smart-phone too that peeps if you need more than the SCHEDULED time for one sheep, or the time for ,- | "[#A] TODO Melk the Cows :farm:" `- has arrived ... We do not have cows, but I know what's involved. Dairy cows are on a strict schedule, milked twice daily. They are automatically the top priority at four in the morning and at four in the afternoon. Writing it down on paper or in emacs is superfluous. Nothing (except the barn being on fire) is more important. "Why isn't Farbror Hans here at Grandfather's funeral?" -- "He had to milk the cows." "Oh. Of course. I forgot. Yes, that's more important."
Re: [O] Using Org-mode for mass-scheduling appointments
On Sat, 15 Mar 2014 07:07:22 -0400, Marcin Borkowski
wrote:
Dnia 2014-01-22, o godz. 12:55:43
Marcin Borkowski napisał(a):
Hi list,
I have the following problem: I want to schedule quite a few short (10
minutes, say) appointments with my students ("mass" is probably an
exaggeration, but there are going to be around 50 of them). I'll have
several time slots, and I want the students to reserve one for each of
them. I'd like to publish a table with "free/reserved" info on the
web. I don't want any fancy web forms and automatic reservation, just
emails+manual updates of the table. Can you imagine any way Org (with
tables, or maybe scheduling) might help, so that I don't have to write
html by hand, for instance?
Just for the record: I ended up using Org to prepare a table with the
possible time slots, which was then printed and attached to a pinboard
near my room. Then, each student could come and write down his/her name
in a selected slot (with a pen). This way, I solved the problem of
race conditions in (probably) the simplest possible way...
This is actually a good solution. If, for example, there are two students
who are there to sign up for exactly the same slot (a conflict) the
resolution is obtained by their mutual discussion, right there by your
room. You do not need to invoke Dijkstra or any sort of mutex devices.
Deadlock is impossible. Some problems are better solved if the computer is
removed.
If student A absolutely must have the time slot already held by student B,
it is the responsibility of A to contact B. You, emacs, and the Org crew
easily relinquish any responsibility.
Re: [O] Tasks with lots of logbook entries are very slow
On Wed, 26 Mar 2014 04:10:02 -0400, Pere Quintana Seguí wrote: El 25/03/14 19:27, Marcin Borkowski ha escrit: Dnia 2014-03-25, o godz. 16:00:01 Pere Quintana Seguí napisał(a): I log most of my work with org-mode. Some of my tasks are repetitive, this is, I do them weekly or daily (i.e. empty mail inbox). After many years, the logs are very long. As a consequence, marking these tasks as done is *very* slow. Is there a workaround that does not involver deleting the logs? Archiving? No, archiving would'nt work, as I need the task every day. Thanks for the tip. Pere Perhaps this will help: Standard method for log maintenance outside of org is to rotate logs into archive. The current log is only for the current day (or month, week, or year). Other criteria, such as log size, can be used to trigger rotation. Rotation cuts off the current log, archives it, possibly deletes truly ancient logs, and starts a new current log. Look up the Linux logrotate command for further info. Here's one description: http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2010/07/logrotate-examples/
Re: [O] Chaining strings between babel blocks: why so many '\'?
On Wed, 26 Mar 2014 18:19:35 -0400, Nicolas Goaziou
wrote:
Hello,
Alan Schmitt writes:
I've been playing with block chaining to generate some dot file then to
export then as images. I had a little trouble finding the number of '\'
I need to put in front of a quote if I want the quote to be quoted. Here
is a way to make it work:
#+name: foo
#+begin_src emacs-lisp :exports none
"bar [label = \"\"test1\"\"]\nbaz [label =
\"\"test2\"\"]"
#+end_src
#+results: foo
: bar [label = "\\"test1\\""]
: baz [label = "\\"test2\\""]
#+begin_src dot :file ~/tmp/test-dot.png :var input=foo :exports results
graph {
$input
}
#+end_src
My question is: why can't I simply use this:
#+name: foo
#+begin_src emacs-lisp :exports none
"bar [label = \"\\\"test1\\\"\"]\nbaz [label = \"\\\"test2\\\"\"]"
#+end_src
#+results: foo
: bar [label = "\"test1\""]
: baz [label = "\"test2\""]
(I guess the answer is in the error in replace-regexp-in-string:
(error "Invalid use of `\\' in replacement text")
.)
Indeed. This function, unless told not to, treats backslashes characters
specially.
Would it be problematic to first transform every "\\" into a "" in
org-babel-expand-body:dot, before the call to
replace-regexp-in-string?
I think `replace-regexp-in-string' should be called with a non-nil
LITERAL argument in this case.
Maybe someone (neilson runs and hides!) should write a tool that allows
construction of C++11-style raw string literals that would
auto-transmogrify into the backslash mess that elisp requires.
Re: [O] emacs24-starter-kit and Aquamacs 3.0
On Thu, 15 May 2014 10:28:13 -0400, Axel Kielhorn wrote: I should have asked earlier, but everyone was suggesting Aquamacs. Since I'm starting from scratch I don't mind switching and it will be easier to share my configuration with the Unix machine I sometimes telnet to. Yes. Because emacs predates all the modern "consumer" keyboard interfaces by a decade or more, and because vanilla emacs is available for just about every platform except possibly Babbage's original Analytical Engine, it really makes sense to avoid grandly "localised" versions of emacs. In my view Aquamacs is the cure for which there is no disease. "To gild refined gold; to paint the lily." --Shakespeare', King John.
Re: [O] Timezones revisited
On Wed, 01 Feb 2017 10:50:24 -0500, Eric Abrahamsen wrote: Russell Adams writes: I understand that Org's timestamp format does not include timezone information. Making that change would be an impractical modification. I'm frequently working with several different timezones and I only need to store a time stamp converted to my local time. Does the time stamp input support some form of timezone input? I checked the manual and tried a few methods and they don't appear supported. If the time stamp format doesn't support timezone info, then the input method won't either, unfortunately. I had one of my occasional attacks of enthusiasm about this subject recently -- using org-caldav while you're traveling really exposes the limitations of timezone-unaware scheduling. Would it be completely out of the question to support an optional timezone marker? From (nth 1 (current-time-zone))? <2017-02-01 Wed PST> The plumbing for time calculations would be... an adventure. But it seems like it could be done in a backwards-compatible way. E Presumably everyone already knows that the timezones are more complicated than hoi polloi believe? The offsets are not always integer values of hours. For example, Newfoundland time is UTC−03:30. Additional complications include daylight saving time and the many historical versions of timezones. The definition of UTC can remain pretty much constant, but local-timezone time varies as a function of both location and calendar date. Allowing user-defined functions (as simple or as complicated as one desires) for translation from UTC might be best.
Re: [O] evil-mode and org
On Tue, 28 Mar 2017 08:57:40 -0400, Matt Price wrote: I've never used Vim but I see a lot of people online raving about evil mode and how much they love it. I'm considering giving it a whirl after the semester ends & I get some free time. I just wondered whether any heavy org users here on the list use evil, and if so, whether you see pain points within org-mode -- my setup is pretty heavily customized, for instance, and I wonder whether that means it will be quite painful to use evil. You will also find people asking why anyone would ever think of using vim. One of those is Aaron Bieber. https://blog.aaronbieber.com/2016/01/30/dig-into-org-mode.html I use vim only when unavoidable, and I simply pretend it is ed (of ancient Unix days). Or maybe I just use ed. I would not bother trying to use ed to access org, and thus would not be tempted to use vi, vim or evil mode for org, either. One fine day, long, long ago, I had to use a Vax that did not have emacs, vim, vi or ed. It did have whatever DEC was using for an editor, but I didn't know how to use it instantly. What to do? What to do? I tried running TECO. Yes, it had TECO! Saved! (Sort of.) Why use vim if emacs is already built into your fingertips?
Re: [O] evil-mode and org
On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 11:12:22 -0400, John Kitchin wrote: Using evil-mode is not "using vim" IMHO. I think this is a question of do you want modal editing or not (I suppose it could also be do you want emacs-lisp or vimscript, but that is not the impression I get these days ;). With emacs you can have either traditional emacs editing (one-mode: edit) or modal editing like vim (for the most part). And you can still use emacs-lisp to customize the environment so you can have things like org-mode. I have seen a growing movement towards modal editing in emacs, e.g. evil-mode, spacemacs, hydra, avy/ivy, etc... and even do some things modally myself with those tools. Thinking historically, I see modal editing in TECO, where everything between "i" and "$" (the ESC key) was insert mode, and everything else was a command. Woe unto the person who omitted the "i" or who inadvertently ended insert mode, because all other text was commands. For example, ihxhgh$ inserts "hxhgh" but just hxhgh$ duplicates the entire buffer. Here is a sample TECO session: *hkiHere is some text that I am inserting. Here is another line. $$ *ht$$ Here is some text that I am inserting. Here is another line. *zjiThis is a new bottom line. Next we try forgetting an "i" command. $$ *here is a forgotten i command $$ ?SYS No such file or directory ?UFI unable to open file e is a forgotten i command for input *
Re: [O] Org-table alignment in Arabic
On Fri, 11 Aug 2017 07:16:26 -0400, wrote: Dear Sir/Madam, I am new to this email list about org-mode, first of all thanks to all contributors of org-mode. I am here seeking your help considering org-table and Arabic text, the issue is described in this post of mine sometime ago: https://emacs.stackexchange.com/q/30495/2443 Look forward to your feedback. Best Regards. I'm afraid that I cannot offer any real help, but since nobody else has answered yet, I'll throw out a few thoughts. Bear in mind that I do not speak or read Arabic, and that my knowledge of the language is restricted to being able to recognize three or four of the letters and to being able to say Salaam aleikum. I'm afraid that the problems are inherent in the usual presentation of Arabic text, in which the form of each letter can vary depending upon context. It seems that some people are working on trying to invent better "monospaced" versions of the alphabet, but those all look clumsy, even to their inventors, and especially so to people who are already conditioned to see the beauty of handwritten Arabic. Your mention, elsewhere, of the related problem of Japanese text seems appropriate. In Japanese, the use of kanji, rather than kana, can be seen as more artistic and proper, and the use of non-standard kanji is regarded by some as "intellectual". (Some would say that the more esoteric Chinese characters you know, the smarter you appear to be.) You thus have in front of you a problem as large as you might wish. Think of it as an opportunity. You can design additional Arabic fonts, and campaign to make them popular. You can develop extensions to emacs to handle whatever versions of Arabic text you wish, including the omnipresent need for dealing with "mixed" text where Arabic and other languages occur together. In particular, you can create your own extensions to org mode. I'm thinking that a better set of rules for positioning the elements of a table need to be defined. We'll help you (a little bit) with the lisp. The difficulties, although huge, are not insurmountable. Slightly more than half a century ago the idea of using computers to handle Arabic text in any way at all was regarded as ridiculously complicated. Now it's merely complicated. You might think, "This answer does not even begin to touch the problem. It omits the distinction between the identity of the character and its presentation. It omits regional substitutions. It omits nearly everything." You're right. I've provided many words, and very little help. Here's a pointer to some truly weird person's attempts to do boustrophodon editing via emacs: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/418365/boustrophedon-text-editing Here is yet another discussion of editing Arabic text: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10395464
Re: [O] An Org-based productivity tool
On Thu, 11 Oct 2018 10:03:15 -0400, Bingo wrote: Le 10 octobre 2018 21:45:53 GMT+05:30, Marcin Borkowski a écrit : - a warning when my efficiency is lower than a set value, and info about how much work I need to do to bump it up to that value. Nice, but it has an anti-feature. For procrastinators, warnings frequently have negative effects. It can be understood in multiple ways : 1. "What the hell" effect : As Dr Art Marckman tells in the book "Smart Change" , there is a "what the hell" effect where the victim goofs off even more to the extent of giving up a goal if he realizes that he is falling behind schedule, or has goofed off more than was advisable. The solution is to forgive oneself, and not beat oneself up. This warning looks like beating oneself up. 2. Showing how much work needs to be done to catch up goes against some self improvement philosophies. E.g. dividing work into subtasks helps in not getting overwhelmed by the amount of work. Or the recommendation to plan breaks in addition to planning to slog, otherwise the plan to slog becomes overwhelming and procrastinators give up. Of course, if it works for you, go for it. Sabotage of the TODO list ... Managing the flow of my own work sometimes runs into unintended sabotage, perpetrated by others or by me. The offending tasks are often large, incapable of division, and not immediately crucial. For example, somewhere in the middle of my list of "Get it done some other time, but not now," tasks is this one: "Repair the International 454 tractor." It rests comfortably on that list unless I either (1) need to use that tractor, or (2) hear my wife telling me, "Why don't you ever get the 454 running? You never get anything done around here! I need to use its bucket, and the Mahindra doesn't have one." From that point onward, and my "TODO" thoughts about writing, about programming, or about training horses are derailed. In case (1) I need to figure out some other approach, like maybe using the Mahindra. In case (2) my wife is right--as always--and my tendency is to stop doing anything at all. My org mode TODO list is absolutely no help when I encounter one of these show-stoppers. If anything, the list is an additional albatross adding to my already encroaching depression. Maybe I need a brain-wave detector, connecting through emacs-lisp AI code to a huge Pomodoro-style graphic display, that will alert me when I am goofing off, falling asleep, or practicing mental evasion.
[O] Help? Orgzly check list boxes too small.
I've been using Orgzly and have been pleased with it, but I find the tiny checkboxes too small for my fumble fingers on my Pixel phone. I've not found any way to expandify the view. Am I overlooking some existing feature?
Re: bi-monthly steps.
On Thu, 12 Mar 2020 14:15:04 -0400, Nick Dokos wrote: "Bi-monthly" is ambiguous: it can mean twice a month or it can mean once every two months and there is no convincing anybody that their use of it is wrong :-) Exactly true. "Bi-weekly" is nearly as ambiguous, but is rescued by an ensuing discussion: "Which two days of the week did you want (the event) to occur?" "Um, ah, I mean every two weeks." "Fine then, let's say that." I think the original question from Christian Hopps presumes the meaning, "Every two months."
Re: bi-monthly steps.
On Fri, 13 Mar 2020 04:01:43 -0400, Michal Politowski wrote: Fortnightly :) Such a useful word. There are 24 semi-months in a year. There are roughly 26 fortnights. American English seem to allow the adverb semimonthly but generally avoids the British term fortnightly. There ought to be an unnecessary book English Made Difficult as a companion piece to Carl E. Linderholm's book Mathematics Made Difficult. On Thu, 12 Mar 2020 18:55:16 -0400, Christian Hopps wrote: could use semimonth then :) > On Mar 12, 2020, at 2:15 PM, Nick Dokos wrote: > > "Bi-monthly" is ambiguous: it can mean twice a month or it can mean > once every two months and there is no convincing anybody that their > use of it is wrong :-) > > -- > Nick > > "There are only two hard problems in computer science: cache > invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors." -Martin Fowler
Re: [O] orgmode for many continuous tasks?
On Mon, 25 Sep 2017 03:21:51 -0400, Mycroft Jones wrote: I'm wondering if org-mode can do this: I have many tasks. Some are one off. But many are tasks that will take a period of time, days, weeks, months. I need to schedule a bit of time every day. Over time I can complete the tasks by plugging away. But I have so many. Half hour chunks work for some tasks, 1 or 2 or 3 hour chunks work best for others. 1) writing 3 different books 2) learning 2 different languages 3) 2 different types of exercise exercise 4) 3 different ongoing tasks at work 5) watching videos that friends send me 6) reading books on my night stand 7) various one-off tasks 8) scheduled items, where I have to do them at a scheduled time. So, for each broad category of task, there are subtasks. So far, it looks like orgmode is good. But, what I'd like is to automatically generate scheduling suggestions for the day. For instance, if I've been putting too much time into languages, then schedule more time for writing the books. And if I've focused too much on one book, remind me to put time into another book. I'd like the scheduler to be a sort of time-accounting system that suggests work for the day in a way that balances the tree. Within each branch of the tree, I'd like the branches to be allocated roughly equal time, over a period of weeks and months, on a day to day basis. Is there a simple workflow in orgmode that can do this? I haven't done elisp for 10 years, but I'm comfortable with it. Would this be simple to implement? Mycroft Hmmm. I have similar problems, but on a somewhat more difficult level. A lot of my tasks are farm-related and are thus self-driven rather than org-mode-driven. For instance, two barn roofs need repair, and seeing them listed as TODO in an agenda does nothing to get started on them, or on the sub-tasks necessary to starting the work on the roofs. But when I look at the roofs, and thus am reminded of "* TODO Repair barn roofs", it's always when I'm already at work on something immediately more pressing. But it gets worse! If I think of a task that needs to be done, and write it into one of my TODO lists, then I tend to ignore it. Adding it to the schedule dismisses it from any immediate concern, and (as I alluded before) much of my work is outside, on the farm, nowhere near my computer. It's almost like Ko-Ko's solution in G&S's operetta 'The Mikado': Ko-Ko: When Your Majesty says "Let a thing be done", it’s as good as done, practically it is done, because Your Majesty’s will is law. Your Majesty says "Kill a gentleman", and the gentleman is to be killed, consequently that gentleman is as good as dead, practically he is dead, and if he is dead, why not say so? The Mikado: I see. [Dramatic Pause] Nothing could possibly be more...satisfactory! My problem with org mode itself thus becomes yet another action item (to be ignored): * TODO Devise a way to project my agenda (in unavoidable brilliance) onto the side of the barn, or perhaps embroider it into the fleece of my sheep (who * TODO need to be shorn). Plausible (or implausible) solutions to my problem or to Mycroft's are hereby solicited.
Re: [O] orgmode for many continuous tasks?
On Wed, 27 Sep 2017 13:02:26 -0400, Mycroft Jones wrote: On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 07:14:25PM +0300, Melleus wrote: That's true. But the clipboard can't beep when you might have forgotten about some important appointment when shearing a sheep, driving a tractor or doing other interesting things... If you don't neeed the reminder functionality then the clipboard is the winner I should agree. If you had a days advance warning, the appointment should be in the printout on the clipboard. If it is an appointment that suddenly came up, you should write it on the clipboard. If you have an urgent appointment scheduled, you shouldn't be up on the roof or driving the tractor. :) Mycroft When I am driving the tractor I cannot hear anything beep. Maybe I should do a Hackaday project that would notify me. Air-raid sirens or eclipsing the sun might get my notice. When shearing sheep I don't want anything on me that is any more high tech than the shears. The electric shears have a high-tech motor. The low-tech, which are actually safer for the sheep, have not changed in design for hundreds of years or more. Burgon & Ball have made them since 1730. https://www.burgonandball.com/shop/scripts/prodList.asp?idcategory=80 I have some nice aluminum clipboards that also have a compartment. Portable writing desk, if you will. I'm going to try incorporating them into a better method for keeping track of things. No beeping, though.
Re: [O] Editing in two columns
On Sat, 24 Feb 2018 19:01:25 -0500, Peter Davis wrote: Is there a way to edit with two columns displayed so I’m only editing and exporting the right hand column? I’m writing a parody of a poem, and I’d like to have the original in the left column for reference, to make sure the rhyme scheme, meters, etc. match, but then I just want to export the right column to html. Thanks, -pd -- Peter Davis www.techcurmudgeon.com Have you tried ^X3 ? That's split-window-right . It'll go to one column while it queries you during export, but exports only your current window.
Re: [O] does this pandoc error look familiar to anybody?
On Mon, 19 Mar 2018 08:30:13 -0400, Colin Baxter wrote:
Adonay Felipe Nogueira writes:
snip
> Good academic and writting practice tells that headings shouldn't
> be more than four levels deep. In LaTeX (which is used for PDF
> export), and its default `article' class, you can have
> `section{}', `subsection{}', `subsubsection{}' and --- if I'm not
> mistaken --- `subsubsubsection{}'.
There's also part{}.
Indeed, if your writing is to be read by other people, not just yourself,
you should try to stay to no more than two levels. If you feel you need
levels deeper than two, perhaps your should refactor your writing.
When I say "two" do I mean * and **, or do I mean ** and ***? Well, I
guess that depends upon what the value of two is.
Moreover, as we can already see in this discussion, any attempt to correct
errors of style, grammar or spelling will itself contain additional
errors. This phenomenon is sometimes called Muphry's Law. Yes, Muphry, not
Murphy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law
Re: [O] General advice beyond Org
On Thu, 17 May 2018 20:28:22 -0400, wrote: Hello, _I_ need help. I am in graduate school, and I keep having issues with my advisor for my strong inclination to use free software. I am obviously not in position to refuse, but she dislikes to have discussions about it. She pays a stipend to me every month, and my tuition is waved. Is anyone here aware of a place where they do computational human biomechanics, mechanics, materials or finite elements where I could interact with free software? (having github, LaTeX, Python, etc.; avoid Micro$oft products, Matlab, Mathematica, etc.). Is there no place where one can simply use free software on a daily basis? It seems from her comments that I am, otherwise, a good researcher. She is a nice person, but I fear that this may become an issue in the future for me (whether with her or other people). As a student or junior faculty, how do you go about this? Do you just nod and wave your freedom good bye? Thank you! (I will post this in other fora as well; don't let that to discourage you from answering, please). What is your field? In some areas of research the foremost software tools have been developed on a MS platform and there is no escape unless you go and develop your own tools. Allow me to illustrate from a non-software perspective, in two different directions. I happen to own a substantial number of horses, and thus find myself employing the services of a farrier. That's the person who trims the hooves and fits shoes. My previous farrier, now retired, made some of his own tools and avoided using the top, well-known brand, GE. (It's GE Forge & Tools, NOT General Electric!) "Too expensive," he said. "Not worth all that extra money." My current farrier works three times as fast as the other guy, and uses nothing but GE tools. Clearly, he can fit in perhaps twice the number of customers a day, and the tools pay for themselves. He could make his own, as can anyone who owns a forge, an anvil, and hammers, but why bother? He makes perhaps $300 an hour when working on horses, and nearly nothing when trying to build tools. I also get questions from young folks between the ages of 8 and 16 who love horses, and want a career working with horses. They hope for a job where they will clean stalls and exercise horses, and maybe help with training. My suggestion to them is to find a profession such as accounting or medicine where they will be able to make enough money to own several horses. After a day cleaning stalls and brushing horses at minimum wage or less, who wants to saddle up Yet Another Horse and go riding? The accountant who can fathom the intricacies of expenses for a Thoroughbred race stable will be well rewarded, and may even get invited to ride. These words are rather far afield from your actual question, but I think you do need to reflect carefully on where your interests actually lie. So back to free software itself. Read, if you have not already done so, this article by rms: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html . Then ponder whether you want your career to follow his delightfully weird footsteps, or whether your field requires a totally different approach. I'm sure that rms would disagree with me--he has every time I've spoken with him--but his is not the only philosophy available.
Re: how to export to odt with 11 or 10 pt fonts? Default font setting
On Thu, 07 Oct 2021 08:28:03 -0400, Uwe Brauer wrote: "JMM" == Juan Manuel Macías writes: Uwe Brauer writes: I searched about google, but it seems that the only way to have a 10 or 11 pt font size is, again, by using styles. Am I right? Yes, you are right. Word processors handle paragraph and character styles. Anything that is not styled is applied by direct formatting, manually, which is often bad practice. Fun fact: 11pt (for example) in libreoffice or M$ Word is not the same as 11pt in LaTeX. The reason is that TeX uses by default the classic point "pt", traditionally used in English-speaking countries. 12pt=1pc (pica). Word processors and DTP programs like InDesign or QuarkXpress use the postscript point, which is somewhat higher. In TeX the postscript point is called 'big point' (bp). There is also the didot point, which in TeX is called "dd" (12dd = 1 cicero). See: https://github.com/tweh/tex-units With the calc-units package you can easily convert between these TeX units in Elisp. For instance: (require 'calc-units) (calc-eval (math-convert-units (calc-eval "11texpt" 'raw) (calc-eval "texbp" 'raw))) Thanks, but it seems 11TeXpt-->10.95 So it is not that different. Sometimes that kind of difference can cause minor sessions of tearing-out-the-hair, like when the expected pagination is off, with just one word hanging off into the wilderness of another separate page. Manual typesetting, back in the dark ages of hand-set lead type, or even Linotype, encountered those problems, too. What did the stymied typesetter do? He'd leave out words! Yes, really!! "This sentence no verb."
Re: Manual suggestion and experience report from a new user (citation processors, 9.5)
On Wed, 13 Oct 2021 11:33:16 -0400, Leszek Wroński wrote: Guys, I've been using Emacs for about 20 years, but I'm only now starting to seriously explore the Org-mode, since I read about the new citation options. I'd like to report my initial experience since maybe this could lead to some amendments to the manual? %snip% Thank you for reporting. The "new user" experience can only be captured once, and it is all too common for the experienced user to omit "obvious" material from documentation. Some day I might go through all the org docs wearing my "new user" hat. I'm not a real new user (emacs since about 1976, TECO before that) but my old-age forgetfulness might help.
Re: convert a org table to plain text
On Tue, 25 Aug 2020 15:44:30 -0400, Uwe Brauer wrote: Hi What is the inverse function to org-table-convert-region? I am unable to find anything in the documentation or google. Regards We Brauer I tried M-x table-release as suggested by the documentation and did not get anything.
Re: Deleting (not archiving) TODO items when done
On Wed, 04 Aug 2021 13:47:11 -0400, William Denton wrote: When I've marked a TODO item as DONE and want to get it out of my projects list, I've always used C-c C-x C-a (org-archive-subtree-default) to get it out of the way. Today I had to go through the archive file to find an old note about something, and the file was huge because it was filled with many trivial TODOs that didn't need to be archived. For example, If I'm waiting to hear back from someone, when they reply I usually just want to mark the task DONE and delete it. I don't need to record it forever. Maybe I've been using the archiving not as intended, but I don't see any other command for getting rid of a TODO. I can't find a command to delete the current task. Am I missing something? Is there a keystroke to delete a TODO? Or does everyone archive everything? Bill -- William Denton https://www.miskatonic.org/ Librarian, artist and licensed private investigator. Toronto, Canada It's just text. Delete it. ^k^k or (for bigger items) establish a region and kill it (^w). If you would like (since you're in emacs) you can write yourself a special button to do it.
