[emacs-wiki-discuss] Re: planner.el questions, suggestion for planner.pdf

[Sacha Chua]

Ccing our mailing list at address@hidden
(http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-wiki-discuss)

Maciej Kalisiak <address@hidden> writes:

> I'm just getting into planner.el, and I am liking very much what I
> think I'll be able to do with it. It's a bit slow going at the
> moment, as somehow I can't get a complete picture how all the parts
> (wiki/planner/remember/diary/calendar/tasks/notes/schedule/etc) are

Welcome to planner! =) I hope we can find ways to get planner to fit
your personal working style. planner.el has accumulated a lot of
modules, but you can use just the basics (planner + emacs-wiki) until
you feel comfortable with them.

> meant to be used and interact, but I'm slowly piecing it together
> from the docs and your great webpages (thanks for the personal
> examples of Plan files!). Do you mind if I bug you with a few

<laugh> Glad you find it useful. All my plan pages can be found at
http://sacha.free.net.ph/notebook/plans/ . The published files are
available at http://sacha.free.net.ph/ . John Sullivan contributed the
bulk of the documentation, and we try our best to keep it up to date.

> The #1 thing that is a thorn in my side right now is, is it possible
> to specify tasks more verbosely somehow? For example, I might want
> to create a task "build foo", and at the same time I might have a
> brief idea on how to perform this task, and so I would like to
> somehow attach this info to the task, perhaps as an explanatory
> paragraph. The one-line task specs seem very limiting in this
> regard. I'm not sure whether one is supposed to specify tasks with
> multiple lines in such cases, or whether notes should be used, or
> what. I had the idea of perhaps using "remember" on the task line in
> question, but the note so generated (I'm using planner-remember.el)
> does not have any context/link information.

Planner task numbers change too much for planner to keep useful
annotations, although I suppose copying the entire task description or
using task IDs for this purpose would help.

The reverse works reliably, though. You can create a note first, then
position point on the note headline and use M-x
planner-create-task-from-buffer to create a task.

If you find yourself adding a lot of detail, you can create a separate
plan page for your notes and then link to the plan page using
WikiWords or [[ExplicitLinks]]. You can do this before you create the
task or after you do it. =)

> A close second is the following question. Up until now, I've been
> using "records" package under emacs to keep various records/logs
> (research log, sysadmin log, journal, etc). I've got fed up with its
> quirks and annoyances, and I don't see the situation changing
> anytime soon, so I'm looking for a replacement, and this in part led
> me to notice planner.el. My question is, as a competent and fluent
> "planner/remember/etc" user, what do you see would be the most
> sensible way of implementing an equivalent system with the
> planner/etc tool set combo? Again, the picture of these tools is not
> completely clear to me, so I figured I'd ask a guru. :) Essentially
> I'm looking for a system of dated text segments with hyperlinks.

I used records before, and it was rather nice. I wanted more freedom
for my notes, though. When I found johnw's planner.el, I liked it so
much I volunteered to maintain it, and here I am! =) What did you
particularly like and dislike about records? I love picking up cool
ideas from other personal information managers.

If you want dated text segments with hyperlinks, check out
remember-planner.el . The comments describe exactly how to set it up.
You can then use M-x remember to pop up a buffer for remembered notes,
which will be placed on your daily page and optionally
cross-referenced with a plan page.

By default, planner will automatically hyperlink to files and planner
notes. If you want it to pick up context from ERC, Gnus, RMAIL, VM,
w3m, or Wanderlust, load the appropriate planner-*.el module. =)

My notes on how I use PlannerMode can be found at

- http://sacha.free.net.ph/notebook/wiki/PlannerMode.php#use
- http://sacha.free.net.ph/notebook/wiki/PlannerMode.php#note42

Essentially, I use planner to keep track of a daily task list. I
associate tasks that don't have to be done by a certain date with
project pages, and I use planner-cyclic to remind me to work on those
projects. I use remember-planner to blog, and planner-rss to export my
blog entries to RSS. Every so often, I use planner-notes-index-*,
planner-search-notes or grep to look things up. =)

> BTW, I was checking out the various documentation files for planner
> before starting, and I ran across the PDF version, which just looks
> painful. It appears that it was first built as a PostScript file,

Excellent point. I've changed it to use pdftex. Thanks for pointing
pdftex out! I didn't actually know about it before.

Are the docs at
http://sacha.free.net.ph/notebook/doc/dev/planner/planner.pdf more
acceptable?

> then converted to PDF using suboptimal settings (the hideous uneven
> and blurry font suggests PS file was generated using the dreaded

It seems still uneven, though...

> Anyhow, the usual kudos and good karma for maintaining such a useful
> Emacs package! :)

Thanks! I hope to make it even more useful to you in the future.
Comments, questions, and suggestions are very much welcome.

(I noticed you're from the DGP group of UToronto. I'm curious about
the Memory Aids research group under the same department. What are
they working on at the moment? I've been wondering about how to turn
my interest in personal information management into something I
can research for graduate school...)

-- 
Sacha Chua <address@hidden> - Ateneo CS faculty geekette
interests: emacs, gnu/linux, making computer science education fun
http://sacha.free.net.ph/ - PGP Key ID: 0xE7FDF77C