[Orgmode] puzzling plain list and tree folding behaviour

[Brian van den Broek]

Hi all,

I have this an item in an org file:

**** Montréal-Python 16
     <2010-10-18 Mon 18:00-21:30>

     Montréal-Python 16 will take place in room PK-1620 of UQAM on
     2010-10-18. This is in the President-Kennedy building. It will be a
     Python in the cloud themed edition.

     Here is our schedule for the evening:

     - 18h00 Opening
     - 18h20 Announcements
     - 18h30 Flash presentations
     - 19h00 Break
     - 19h20 Main presentations
     - 20h30 Discussions and refreshments at Benelux

     Our main presenter is going to be Simon Law and he is going to talk
     about Startup Mistakes in Cloud Deployment.

** Ubuntu
<etc>

There are three puzzling things going on:

1) When I first loaded up the org file in which this text occurs, the 
ancestor headlines of the subtree are displayed. This is so even though 
org-startup-folded evaluates to t. Other files behave as expected, 
opening to display only top level headings. Even odder, the extent of 
what is displayed on start-up appears to be a function of the folded 
state when I closed emacs while viewing the file. It certainly varies as 
I open emacs to the file, play with the folding, close emacs, and 
repeat. (This without saving the file.)

2) Where `** Ubuntu' occurs in the snippet above, on startup I have 
`...' and the subsequent level-2 heading is apparently folded away under 
the level-4 heading. I can only make it display if I fold and unfold the 
heading `*** Python' which is the parent of the one in the snippet.

3) If I hit TAB on any of the - lines of the plain list save the last, I 
get the mini-buffer message `EMPTY ENTRY'. If I hit TAB on the last line 
(`- 20h30...') the paragraph `Our main presenter...' gets folded under 
that line.

I rarely make use of plain lists. But, the observed behaviour is not at 
all what the documentation would lead me to expect. Can anyone cast some 
light as to what is going on?

On exploring what I had set to try to track down the problem, I do have 
`(setq org-cycle-separator-lines 1)' in my .emacs. When I comment it 
out, the exact pattern described in (1) alters a bit, but not too the 
expected behaviour. Points (2) and (3) are unaffected.

org-version:   7.01h
emacs version: 23.1.1
ubuntu 10.04
I have not set any org-mode variables that treat of plain lists.

Thanks and best,

Brian vdB