Re: forms and org-mode

[Jude DaShiell]

Interesting, thanks for your response.  I keep tables in their own files,
one table per file to minimize complexity.


On Sat, 21 Aug 2021, Tim Cross wrote:

>
> OK, but I'm still a little unclear exactly what you are asking about.
>
> If it is just a general question about whether Emacs Forms could be used
> for data input into an org table, the basic answer is yes, I think so.
>
> If your asking if anyone has done this - not that I'm aware of.
>
> If your asking how hard it would be to do, well that depends.
>
> The biggest challenge I can see is that Emacs forms expects a data file
> which  just consists of one record per line where each record is
> separated by a specific character. That part is not too hard. However,
> where things might get tricky is if you want to keep the data in an org
> file with other org data.
>
> I imagine you could maintain a table in a data file fairly easily. You
> can use the org '|' as the field separators and you would likely need to
> write an input and output filter function to remove white space and add
> it back on writing. None of this would be too hard.
>
> However, if you wanted an emacs forms interface to one or more tables
> inside a normal org file, it might be more tricky. You would need a far
> more sophisticated input/output filters and possibly need to narrow the
> file or do something else to help the filter functions target the data.
>
> It has been many years since I used Emacs Forms. From memory, I gave up
> on them as the level of maintenance exceeded the usefulness. I guess it
> all really depends on how much data you need to edit and how predictable
> the target data files are.
>
> .
> Jude DaShiell <jdashiel@panix.com> writes:
>
> > My reason for using forms to do data input into org tables is to minimize
> > errors in the data input to the org tables.
> >
> > On Sat, 21 Aug 2021, Tim Cross wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> So you are asking about using Emacs forms for data input into an org
> >> table?
> >>
> >> Just not clear on what exactly your asking about.
> >>
> >> Jude DaShiell <jdashiel@panix.com> writes:
> >>
> >> > A table with a time stamp column, a text column for notes and an interval
> >> > column rounded to nearest hour.  Any statistics to be calculated on that
> >> > intervals column.
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > On Sat, 21 Aug 2021, Ihor Radchenko wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> Can you elaborate?
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
>
>
>