Re: [emacs-humanities] Emacs "Projects" management?

[Alan Davis]

These responses are overwhelming, not only for the number and depth of the
messages, but they exhibit a remarkable range of methodologies for project
management.

It was made clear to me that I have not presented a very well-defined
picture of my own needs.  I think there is enough grist in these several
responses to keep me busy, so I'm not sure there is a  need to appeal for
more ideas.  I took some notes.

I will be experimenting with some of these ideas.  Some of them involve
more programming than I am equipped to do.

It is clear to me now that Projectile and project.el are both amenable to
non-programming pursuits.  Believe it or not, this has been a major
stumbling block for me.  Emacs is the center of almost all of my work.  My
first encounter with Emacs was with demacs, which the FSF provided to me on
14 3.5" disks including a wealth of unix tools ported to windows. It was
much simpler, there were no "packages," and I had a great deal of time.
Elsewhere I have made the point that what did it for me, above and before
all, was the integrated emacs tex-info manual.  It blew my mind!   Over
time I was able to generate a useful ".emacs" file, many elements of which
remain with me until today.  From these responses, I see numerous packages,
and some types of packages I had not even imagined to exist, including
workspace management.

I wonder whether the .emacs-project file project marking idea is currently
part of the development version of emacs.  I think that would help me.

But I am even more jazzed about the ideas of Juan-Manuel about freeing
himself from the rigid directory and file concept.  That almost gets me to
the spotlight and virtual folder concepts of macOS.  I do not appreciate
the walled garden of the Apple world.  These tools are exceptionally
liberating---if one wants to live in those confines!   Benjamin Franklin
was a brilliant and creative American who contrived many inventions.  He
lived in the 18th Century.   I much prefer his ideas about inventions, to
those of the wardens of the Apple empire:

>
> “As we enjoy the advantages from the inventions of others, we should be
> glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this
> we should do freely and generously”
>

Some of ideas here may help me to organize my virtual slips of paper and
collections of literature, drafts, outlines...

I am intrigued by Org-Roam, and it's bidirectional links (if I understand
that concept).  I have used org-mode for many years, but have not taken
advantage of many of the more complicated "packages".   Some tools
mentioned herein may deserve more attention.  I appreciate the trouble each
of you went through to explain them.

Actually, I think I cannot state my needs more clearly, until I have a
better handle on the tools.

Alan Davis

On Wed, Oct 6, 2021 at 5:32 AM Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se> wrote:

> Alan Davis <alan3davis@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > First, I have used git, in fact I used to use it to keep a directory tree
> > synchronized on two or three machines.  Like Dropbox.  But it became a
> > heavy lift after a month or two, with a variety of different kinds of
> > files, large and small, and---unfortunately---the entire history.  I did
> > not learn to use Git in the best way, I did not learn to back track into
> > the history.  I abandoned the use of git, once it became too confusing to
> > keep things straight.  The workflow was terrific; it was convoluted,
> > though, after a while.  I use Dropbox on three devices; it is easy, but I
> > still end up with "conflicted copies".
>
> Here are some alternatives you could consider:
>
> 1. git-annex - This is basically git but for large files, and gives a
> Dropbox-like experience with it's git-annex-agent.  I haven't used
> this that much, but others swear by it.  A very impressive piece of
> software.  You also get the git history for any normal text files, but
> not for large binary files (video, etc.).
>
> 2. unison - This keeps everything in synch, and IME does a better job
> than Dropbox.  Unfortunately, it requires you to use exactly the same
> version on all machines, or they will be incompatible.  It has no
> history.
>
> 3. myrepos - This basically just makes it easy to synch many ordinary
> git repositories from the command line.  It is what I use, but it has
> the drawback that it's a bit manual (read: when working on my laptop,
> I need to start the day by running "mr up" and end it with "mr push").
> https://myrepos.branchable.com/
>
> If anyone has any other suggestions, please send them to the list.
> This is my current best short-list of tools for synching, but I
> haven't looked into this seriously in the last 2-3 years, so the
> landscape might have changed.
>


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