[Orgmode] Org-mode things

[Nuutti Kotivuori]

Hello,

I'm a very new org-mode user and thought I'd introduce myself while
asking about a few things. I've used org-mode only about a couple
weeks and am slowly trying to learn all the kinks of it.

But there's a few things I'm having difficulty setting up.

The main confusion I have is about 'scheduled' and 'deadline' items
versus items that just have an active date (and time).

For me, the meanings are roughly:

- Active date and time, but not todo: an event I need to know about
  but probably do nothing about.
- Active date and time, and todo: an appointment, something that I
  need to act on.
- Scheduled date: merely a timestamp that tells me that this item is
  not relevant to me *before* the given time. But it also doesn't mean
  that it would be an appointment or have a set time to do it on (just
  after the scheduled time).
- Deadline date: a hard deadline before which I need to get something
  done - but doesn't specify when it needs to be done, just before the
  deadline.

So, to actually use these in org-mode, I'd like to have the following
kinds of lists:

- Agenda: I want an agenda with all the active date events, but
  *without* scheduled items at all and with deadline items *only*
  shown on the date the deadline is actually on. The agenda doesn't
  need any early warning since for me it is simply the things that
  must get done.

- Agenda of todo entries: Same as above, but only for todo items -
  shorter agenda when I only want to see what I must do.

- Todo-list: The normal todo list, but with a few differences. I want
  the todo list to show me everything relevant I need to do, so I want
  to see scheduled entries on the todo list only *after* their
  scheduled time has passed - when they are actually relevant. For
  deadline entries, I want their color to reflect the normal warning
  days behavior, so I can quickly spot deadlines that are approaching
  on my todo list. And for normal todo items that have a scheduled
  time, I wouldn't wish to see them on the todo list at all - they are
  in the agenda and I don't have to care about them except on the
  specific day or time they are on.

I'd be happy for any pointers to achieve these kinds of listings in
org-mode.

Then another general problem.

The problem is that I have a really hierarchical tree, where the
*headings above* are really important. If I have a todo item like:

  ***** Call about invoice

That doesn't help me much if I can't see the heading that it is
under. This is ofcourse no problem with sparse trees as those can show
the context nicely, but it is a problem in two things.

The todo lists I have are a bit messy since I don't know what the todo
item is about without peeking under which heading it is. Usually this
isn't a big problem since either I guess or can just look it up fast
enough - but sometimes it would be nice to have a possibility of
putting the immediate next parent heading in a column or somehow on
the line to show.

But the bigger problem I have about this is about archiving.

For me, the problem is that I get a lot of DONE todo items on my
lists, which I want to leave around for reference (so I don't want to
delete them), but I don't want them cluttering up the display.

I can't make them archived subtrees, because they are not in their own
subtree. Also, filing them in another file is problematic, since they
lose their context in the tree that I have. Sure, nowadays there seems
to be a way of "saving the context" in the filed entry itself, but
those are hard to read from the properties and the hierarchy of the
entries is lost in the archive. So, for an external archive to work,
it would have to replicate the structure of the original tree - and
even that could get a bit odd when I move things around.

So, I have come up with a way that's atleast a 90% solution for me,
perhaps even perfect. For each subtree that I have todo items on, I
have an archived entry first, like this:

  ** Some topic
  *** Archived   :ARCHIVE:...
  *** TODO Do this
  *** TODO Do that

So, now when I mark a todo item done, I just press M-right to put it
inside the archived entry like this:

  ** Some topic
  *** Archived   :ARCHIVE:...
  **** DONE Do this
  *** TODO Do that

And now when I press 'tab' on the archived line, the DONE entry is
hidden inside the archived tree - and I never had to open the archive
tree for this (I don't want to open the tree often because it's going
to contain a lot of entries).

So, this solution works for me, but I'm wondering if others have had
similar problems and how they've solved those.

I have a few more problems to talk about, but this will do for
starters - and I'm sure I will have quite a few more as I start to use
org-mode more.

Thanks in advance,
-- Naked