[Chicago] Template Document

[Christopher Allan Webber]

There is a tool that does pretty much all you're asking for and more.
It's plaintext, it's beautiful, it's as simple or as complex as you
need.

It's called orgmode.
http://orgmode.org/
http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/orgtutorial_dto.php

It's also the best thing that's happened to me in years.  Okay that's
stretching it.  Maybe it's not stretching it.

Seriously, orgmode is the fucking best.

Also, if you turn on logging, you can pull up a list of every item
you've worked on very easily from the agenda.  I use it to pull up lists
of everything I've done for the last 2 weeks for our bi-weekly progress
update at work.

It also does task and note capturing, etc, with references back to where
your task came from.

I even use it to sync our work bugtracker with my local notes.  I've
been meaning to write a blogpost on this, it's pretty simple with
org-babel.

Emacs users only, though!  Although if there weren't enough reasons
already to use emacs, orgmode itself would be a reason.  There are
several vim users on the orgmode mailing list that only use emacs for
orgmode (with viper-mode enabled of course) :O

 - cwebb

Samir Faci <samir at esamir.com> writes:

> I.  Rant
>
> Okay.. so.. my work is currently driving me a bit crazy with reports...
>
> daily, weekly, monthly.... and starting to feel like I should have a
> staring role with Office Space (well, there is a Samir in that movie
> ).
>
> So.. I started a minor little pet project to encourage my laziness in
> not keeping track of my time.
>
> I basically setup an identi.ca server, and I tweet what I'm working
> on... and it generates a report saying
>
> yesterday:
>  * task 1
>  * task 2
>
> Today:
>   * task 1
>   * task 2
>
>
> which is all working fine.  Right now, I want to build a bit more
> intelligence into it, and I was looking for some suggestions.
>
> 1. Question 1
>
> I don't want to statically define what the report should look like, so
> I was looking for some form of already existing (ideally) or simple
> too that would allow a user to define a document template
>
> and have it define where certain data goes.....
>
> I could probably write a very simple one on my own.. just wondering if
> there was any pre-existing technology / standard that I should look
> at.
>
> ie:
>
> <<Date>>
>   *  <Task> <Delta>
>   * <Task>  <Delta>
>
> or...
> <Date>, <Project>, <Task>
>
> allowing the user to format his report anyway he wants without having
> to touch the code....
>
> Okay.. so did that make sense?  Let me know if I need to clarify
> something... concept is still somewhat vague... but essentially I want
> to build a tool to not have to deal with TPS reprots anymore.
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