11 KiB

Raw Blame History

The Org-mode TODO list

Introduction
- Nomenclature
Tasks
Archive
- Archived Tasks
COMMENT HTML style specifications

-- mode:org --

Introduction

This is a loose collection of ideas and TODO items for the future development of Org-mode. These ideas come from various sources, mostly from emacs-orgmode@gnu.org, from direct emails to me, or from my own day-dreaming. I don't always mention the source of an idea, out of laziness. However, when I implement a good idea, I try to mention the origin of this idea in the Acknowledgments section of the manual - let me know if I forgot to give you credit for something.

Nomenclature

On this page, I am using TODO keywords in the following way:

Keyword	Intention
TODO	A development that is going to happen, once I have time or once I figure out how to do it.
IDEA	A new idea, I have not yet decided what if anything I will do about it.
WISH	A wish, probably voiced by someone on emacs-orgmode@gnu.org. This is less than a new idea, more a change in existing behavior.
QUESTION	A question someone asked, that needs some thinking before it can be answered
DECLINED	I have decided not to implement this feature, but I am keeping it in the list so that people can see it, complain, or still try to convince me.
INCONSISTENCY	Some behavior in Org-mode that is not as clean and consistent as I would like it to be.
BUG	This needs to be fixed, as soon as possible.
DONE	Well, done is done.
NEW	This is a tag, indicating recently added entries

Tasks

Structure

TODO Definition lists, like in Muse

TODO Get rid of all the \r instances, which were used only for XEmacs.

TODO proper visibility cycling for items

Make them not hide the text after the final list item. This is not trivial, we cannot usenormal outline stuff, needs a separate implementaiton.

WISH Inline TODO entries

A way to put a TODO entry without starting a new section.

Agenda issues

WISH Make more modes changeable from the agenda

These could be made available for toggling, just like follow-mode. Examples:

org-agenda-todo-list-sublevels
org-tags-match-list-sublevels
org-agenda-todo-ignore-scheduled

IDEA Sort TODO entries according to type?

This would apply for the list collection, not in the day entries. However, I could also have a TODO keyword criterion that could be used in the day entries, as one of the minor criteria.

Links

WISH Variable of standard links for completion with C-c C-l

Or something like that, to make standard links fast.

IDEA Find all links to a specific file

IDEA Make info HTML links work for links to Info files

Info links of course only work inside Emacs. However, many info documents are on the web, so the HTML exporter could try to be smart and convert an Info link into the corresponding link on the web. For example, we could use the GNU software site then Name.HTML. Here is the link to be used: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/ Another question is, is this URL going to be stable so that it makes sense to actually put this into org.el?

IDEA Make news HTML links work, using Google.

I can use Google groups with a message id to find a USENET message, even if the original link points to gnus.

TODO Remove irretrievable links from published HTML output

This is on David's table, and he will hopefully integrate a mechanism for this into org-publish.el. The discussion about this was started by Austin Frank

TODO Document the character protection in links

I don't think this is really covered anywhere. Maybe we also should protect characters in the visible part, to make sure thing will never be on two lines…?

WISH Radio targets across files

I guess each org file could write a .orgtargets.filename file, if it has any radio targets.

Tables

WISH Row formulas

@4=…..

TODO Write a tutorial

Demonstrate running averages.

WISH Make a variable that current line should be recomputed always

in each table, skipping headers of course.

WISH Interactive way to get a converted table?

BUG When computing in a narrowed column, this may go wrong.

Computing changes fields and does not yet see correctly if the column width has changed, in the case of a narrowed column.

Compatibility issues

Emacs 21 compatibility

This is being phased out. Almost everything works under Emacs 21, but in the future I will make little effort to support it.

DECLINED Column view does not yet work for Emacs 21s.

Declined, because I don't know how to do this. Too many problems.

XEmacs compatibility

QUESTION Is there an issue with the coding system of HTML exported files?

In the code I used to have a comment saying that

 (and (fboundp 'coding-system-get)
      (boundp 'buffer-file-coding-system)
                buffer-file-coding-system))

always returns nil, implicating that setting the coding system for the export buffer would not work correctly. however, I have never followed up on this and never had a bug report - so I am wondering if there is an issue at all.

DECLINED Column view does not yet work for XEmacs.

Declined, because I don't know how to do this. Too many problems.

DECLINED Rewrite the `format' function

To make narrowing work under XEmacs, I would need to write a version of format that does transport text properties, or I would have to rework narrowing entirely. Unlikely that this will happen, mainly because it is working in Emacs and so does not bother me personally so much. Anyway, I don't know if people are actually using narrowing very much at all.

Exporting

IDEA Convert links to footnotes for ASCII export.

INCONSISTENCY Find a better place for formatting checkboxes

Right now this is being done as part of `org-html-expand', which does not seem logically correct.

Publishing

We need to simplify the publishing options. Here are some of the options for publishing projects

Publishing options

:`:base-directory' Directory containing publishing source files

:`:publishing-directory' Directory (possibly remote) where output files

                       will be published.

:`:preparation-function' Function called before starting publishing

                       process, for example to run `make' for updating
                       files to be published.

:`:base-extension' Extension (without the dot!) of source files. This

                  actually is a regular expression.

:`:exclude' Regular expression to match file names that should

                  not be published, even though they have been selected
                  on the basis of their extension.

:`:include' List of files to be included regardless of

                  `:base-extension' and `:exclude'.

:`:publishing-function' Function executing the publication of a file.

                      This may also be a list of functions, which will
                      all be called in turn.

:`:link-validation-function' Function to validate links

:`:auto-index' When non-nil, publish an index during

                  org-publish-current-project or org-publish-all.

:`:index-filename' Filename for output of index. Defaults to `index.org'

                  (which becomes `index.html').

:`:index-title' Title of index page. Defaults to name of file.

:`:index-function' Plug-in function to use for generation of index.

                  Defaults to `org-publish-org-index', which generates
                  a plain list of links to all files in the project.

TODO Document the :recursive option

QUESTION Does anyone use the index related options

QUESTION Remove :base-extension and only use :include

WISH Simple interaction between :include :exclude :recursive

QUESTION Use an export-directory option per file?

For now we use publishing-directory but this is not consistent with the convention of using "publishing" when there is a project to publish.

Miscellaneous Stuff

BUG Comments cannot be filled

QUESTION Inlining of images in Org-mode files

TODO Fixup outline-magic.el, so that it can be used.

TODO Use the new argument of bibtex-url

Roland Winkler was kind enough to implement a new argument to the `bibtex-url' command that allows me to retrieve the corresponding URL, whether it is taken from a URL field or constructed in some clever way. Currently I am not using this, because too many people use an old Emacs version which does not have this. however, eventually I will implement this.

QUESTION Do we need a 43 folders implementation?

That could easily be done in an org-mode file. But then, maybe this should really be a paper thing.

Priorities

Here is some information about priorities, which is not yet documented.

QUOTE Priorities

TODO entries: 1 or 1,2,… DEADLINE is 10-ddays, i.e. it is 10 on the due day i.e. it goes above top todo stuff 7 days before due SCHEDULED is 5-ddays, i.e. it is 5 on the due date i.e. it goes above top todo on the due day TIMESTAMP is 0 i.e. always at bottom but as a deadline it is 100 but if scheduled it is 99 TIMERANGE is 0 i.e. always at bottom DIARY is 0 i.e. always at bottom

Priority * 1000

INCONSISTENCY: items don't grow/shrink due to promotion.

In plain lists, multiple demote/promote commands executed directly after each other don't change the scope of the command - the initially selected text continues to be selected. This is inconsistent with the behavior of outline sections, were the subtree for promotion/demotion is newly defined after each command. Which convention is better? Should this be consistent between trees and plain lists?

INCONSISTENCY: M-TAB does not work on plain lists. Why???

QUESTION grep on directory does not yet work.

I am actually not sure, I might have addressed this already, but my memory is failing me. Needs some checking.

11 KiB Raw Blame History