org-working-set
Manage a working-set of org-nodes
org-working-set is a package for org-mode within emacs.
Read below for a description.
The current version is 2.5.0.
Table of Contents
About this Package
Purpose
Manage a small subset of org-nodes to visit them with ease.
On a busy day org-working-set allows to jump quickly between the nodes associated with different tasks. It provides an answer to the question: What have I been doing before beeing interrupted in the middle of an interruption ?
The working-set is a small set of nodes; you may add nodes (which means: their ids) to your working-set, if you want to visit them frequently; the node visited last is called the current node. The working-set is volatile and expected to change each day or even hour.
Once you have added nodes to your working set, there are two ways to traverse them (both accessible through the central function `org-working-set’): circling through your working set is the quickest way to return to the current node or visit others; alternatively, the working-set menu produces a editable list of all working-set nodes, allowing visits too.
Please note, that org-working-set adds an id-property to all nodes in the working-set; but it does not move or change the nodes in any other way.
The list of ids from the nodes of your working-set is stored within the property-drawer of a distinguished node specified via `org-working-set-id’; this node will also collect an ever-growing journal of nodes added to the working-set, which may serve as a reference later.
Similar Packages
Depending on your needs you might find these packages interesting too as they provide similar functionality: org-now and org-mru-clock.
User-Story
Assume, you come into the office in the morning and start your Emacs with org-mode, because you keep all your notes in org. Yesterday evening you only worked within the org-node ‘Feature Request’; therefore your working-set only contains this node (which means: its id).
So, you invoke the working-set menu (or even quicker, the circle) and jump to the node ‘Feature Request’ where you continue to work. Short after that, your Boss asks for an urgent status-report. You immediately stop work on ‘Feature Request’ and find your way to the neglected node ‘Status Report’, The working set cannot help you to find this node initially, but then you add it for quicker access from now on. Your working set now contains two nodes.
Next you attend your scrum-meeting, which means you open the node ‘Daily Scrum’. You add it to your working set, because you expect to make short excursions to other nodes and want to come back quickly. After the meeting you remove its node from your working set and continue to work on ‘Status Report’, which you find through your working-set quickly.
When done with the report you have a look at your agenda, and realize that ‘Organize Team-Event’ is scheduled for today. So you decide to add it to your working-set (in case you get interrupted by a phone call) and start to work on this for an hour or so. The rest of the day passes like this with work, interruptions and task-switches.
If this sounds like your typical work-day, you might indeed benefit from org-working-set.
Setup
- org-working-set can be installed with package.el
- Invoke `org-working-set’, it will explain and assist in setting the customizable variable `org-working-set-id’
- Optional: Bind `org-working-set’ to a key, e.g. C-c w
Screenshot
The screenshot shows a public sample-text about emacs/orgmode/gtd (upper window) and the working set menu with three nodes from this text (lower window).
Files
Implementation
- org-working-set.el
- The complete lisp source
Building
- Rakefile
- Helpful Ruby-Tasks for building
Tests
In subdir tests.
- owst.el
- ert-tests for org-working-set
- run-tests.ps1
- Windows command file to start an emacs, which is specifically prepared for the tests
- run-tests.el
- Customizations for the tests
Releasing a new version
Testing and checking
- rake test
- (byte-compile-file “org-working-set.el”)
- elint-current-buffer
- checkdoc
- package-lint-current-buffer ;; ignore messages about org-ws–prefix
Preparing
- Update Version number in org-working-set.el
- Update Change Log in org-working-set.el
- Check and update Commentary in org-working-set.el
- Run rake to:
- copy those pieces of information into README.org and ChangeLog.org
- run tests
- git add/commit as appropriate
- v=x.y.z ; git tag -a -m $v $v ; git push ; git push –tags
Latest Change Log
See ChangeLog.org for older entries.
2.5
- Allow inline tasks in working set
- `kill’ as a synonym for `delete’
2.4
- todo-state can be changed from working set menu
- working set is kept in least-recently-used order
- Wrapping org-id-find and org-id-goto more often
2.3
- Renamed ‘log of working-set nodes’ into ‘journal’
- Create org-working-set-dispatch-keymap for easier customization
- Reorganized keys (but you may change it if you like)
- In-prompt display of settings for clock-in and land-at
- Added a ‘Fictional User-Story’ to the documentation
- Running tests under unix
2.2
- Moved org-id-cleanup to its own package
- Improved handling of missing ids in working set
- Refactoring
- Fixes
2.1
- Added org-id-cleanup to clean up unreferenced IDs without attachments
2.0
- Added a log of working set nodes
- The node designated by org-working-set-id will be used to store this log
- Simplified handling of clocking
- Retired property working-set-nodes-do-not-clock
- Renamed custom-variable org-working-set-clock-into-working-set into org-working-set-clock-in
- Renamed org-working-set-show-working-set-overlay into org-working-set-show-overlay
- Renamed org-working-set-goto-bottom-in-working-set into org-working-set-goto-bottom
1.1
- Moved functions for working set into its own file
- Show breadcrumbs in working-set-menu
- Prepare for melpa