[emacs-wiki-discuss] Re: Sort tasks alphabetically

[Kai von Fintel]

On Sat, 04 Dec 2004 16:51:52 -0800, Jody Klymak <address@hidden> wrote:

>
> Hi Kai,
>
> > Cool. That works and is a pretty good substitute, although sorting
> > by prefix would be closer to GTD nirvana, since you would have tasks
> > associated both with the real project they belong to and with the
> > context in which they will be carried out.
>
> Its hard to imagine a sorting scheme where you didn't have to
> contextualize everything, or have a special markup associated with
> the context. Do you *really* want to have to enter
> 1) the date (maybe nil)
> 2) the plan page
> 3) the context
> for every task?  I put context into my plan pages; if you want to sort
> by context, put the context into the name? (i.e."WorkSweepFloors",
> "WorkInventColdFusion")

I guess this is getting somewhat offtopic. But the GTD idea is that a
project like InventColdFusion may at a certain point have as its next
action "Call Albert Einstein for his opinion" and you would want that
be listed not just on the project page for InventColdFusion but also
on a list of phone calls you need to make. So, my idea was that if I
enter it as "Phone: Call Albert Einstein for his opinion" and I sort
the tasks on my day page by the first part of the string, I will have
all the phone calls I need to make -- no matter which project they
belong to -- grouped together, and so when I'm in phone mode, I can
just do all of them as a batch.

Another next action for InventColdFusion might be "Buy new physics
textbook", which should be grouped together with other things to buy
at the mall, so if I enter it as "Mall: buy new physics textbook" and
sort tasks on the string on my day page, I will have all the things I
need to do at the mall bunched together, no matter which project they
belong to.

I don't want to change planner so that the context for a task needs to
be entered at a prompt. I just wanted to start each task description
with the context in which the task would be carried out and have the
planner-sort-tasks function help me bunch all of the tasks connected
to the same context together. Does that make sense?

-- Kai.