[O] Remaining work/progress report: nearly useful, help needed

[Myles English]

Hi orgees,

In March I had a go at making a "Remaining work/progress report"[1].
Having make some progress, I am looking for:

- help,
- collaborators,
- opinions on whether this would be useful enough to be worth the
  effort,
- whether anyone else has something like this (but better) and
- any other wisdom,

with a view to contributing it.


Table of Contents
_________________

1 Features
2 Usage
3 How it works
4 Improvements necessary to make it truly useful


1 Features
~~~~~~~~~~

  Attachments: minimal.el my-progress.el a.org b.org

  Currently it can make a table consisting of a mixture of the Table of
  Contents (TOC) entries and the inline tasks within each section, e.g.:

   ITEM                         Effort  CLOCKSUM  Remaining   
  ------------------------------------------------------------
   .1 Heading One                           1:25              
   ... 1.1 A sub heading                    0:36              
   .        Draw a figure       1:00        0:36  0:24        
   ... 1.2 Another sub heading              0:49              
   .        Write this bit      1:20        0:49  0:31        


  Most of the code was available from various places so there is not
  much original work from me in this.


2 Usage
~~~~~~~

  - start emacs: emacs -Q -l minimal.el a.org

  - excute the emacs-lisp source blocks

  - refresh the "Remaining" properties:
    goto each property and press C-c s RET RET

  - Execute the dynamic block C-c c in "Progress table"


3 How it works
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Whenever a task is clocked in to, the value of a new "Effort" property
  is prompted for.  When the task is clocked out of, a new property
  "Remaining" is added that is the difference of Effort special property
  CLOCKSUM.

  The buffer is exported ascii-like to get the TOC with its headline
  numbering, and is matched with corresponding lines of the captured
  column view.


4 Improvements necessary to make it truly useful
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  1. include a captured column view of the INCLUDEd file b.org: the file's
     headings are included in the TOC because it uses the new exporter, but
     not in the column-view.  Maybe exporting as org first and then
     taking the column view of that buffer would work.

  2. Accumulate the time Remaining in the same way that CLOCKSUM does;
     it propagates upwards to higher level headings so that you can see
     (e.g.) how long Chapter 1 will take in total

  3. Refresh all the Remaining properties automatically

  I would really appreciate some help, particularly with 1.

Thanks,

Myles


Footnotes: 
[1]  http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/53567

minimal.el
Description: application/emacs-lisp

my-progress.el
Description: application/emacs-lisp

a.org
Description: Text document

b.org
Description: Text document