Re: [O] Refiling list items

[Jeff Horn]

On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 06:05, Nicolas Goaziou <address@hidden> wrote:
> From my point of view, lists cannot be a subset of headlines. Indeed,
> headlines are global structural elements, whereas items are local
> structural elements. In other words, moving an item outside of its
> scope, which is the list it belongs, will remove any structural meaning
> it has.

I don't disagree.

> For example, what is the point of moving an un-ordered item into an
> ordered list, or, worse, an un-ordered item into a description list?
> Sure, the item being moved and the destination list may share the same
> structure, but it's only a part of the equation.

I frequently use description lists as a quick way to get something
like "bold inline headers" for lists of test answers and questions.
Often, extended answers will be a description list item of several
paragraphs, or several paragraphs with sublists thrown in. The latter
doesn't work well. I agree I should probably figure out a better way
to organize this information, but it just feels natural at the time
and doesn't seem worth the trouble to fix after the fact.

> My point is that outside of its list, an item is just plain text.
>
> Thus, why not take that into account? Instead of creating a magical
> function to refile items anywhere, let's just extend `org-refile' to
> work on a region of text which is not a sub-tree.
>
> At the moment, org-refile understands the concept of region, but checks
> if that region holds a sub-tree. What about removing that check, and
> adapt the code to text without trees? It will then be the user's problem
> if he wants to match apples and oranges. Furthermore, as a side effect,
> refiling an item would simply mean selecting it and using refile
> interface.

Brilliant!

-- 
Jeffrey Horn
http://www.failuretorefrain.com/jeff/