org-clock-convenience-clocked-agenda-re is not robust to changes in org-agenda-prefix-format

[nelson-liu]

This is a continuation of https://github.com/dfeich/org-clock-convenience/issues/9#issuecomment-704708405

First of all, thanks for building this package---it really is such a convenience for org-clock.

I've noticed that sometimes, the package doesn't work on particular lines in my agenda---the culprit turns out to be that the line format is different from what org-clock-convenience-clocked-agenda-re expects.

Digging deeper, I realized it's because i've set the following variable:

  (setq org-agenda-prefix-format '((agenda . " %i %-12:c%?-12t%-6e% s")
                                   (todo . " %i %-12:c %-6e")
                                   (tags . " %i %-12:c")
                                   (search . " %i %-12:c")))

(the agenda item is the one that really matters here).

It'd be nice if there was some way to make org-clock-convenience-clocked-agenda-re more robust to custom settings of org-agenda-prefix-format, or at least document that only particular values of org-agenda-prefix-format work well.

For the meanwhile, though, I'm happy to just remove / override this configuration line. I use org-agenda-custom-commands, so I can override org-agenda-prefix-format on a section-by-section basis (note the first block doesn't display the effort, while the third does).

  (setq org-agenda-custom-commands
        '(("c" "Day planner with To-Dos"
           ((agenda ""
                    ((org-agenda-span 'day)
                     (org-deadline-warning-days 365)
                     (org-agenda-prefix-format " %i %-12:c%?-12t% s")
                     ))
            (alltodo ""
                  ((org-agenda-overriding-header "To Refile")
                   (org-agenda-files '("~/git/gtd/inbox.org"))))
            (alltodo ""
                ((org-agenda-overriding-header "Next actions")
                 (org-agenda-skip-function #'org-agenda-skip-all-siblings-but-first)
                 (org-agenda-prefix-format "%-32:(org-agenda-format-parent 30) %?-12t%-6e")
                 ))
            nil))
          ))

[dfeich]

I think your current workaround of showing the information in different blocks (or could even be different views as different agenda custom views) is nice. Getting org-clock-convenience to automatically adapt to the settings in org-agenda-prefix-format would be quite a high effort, so I would not like to go that way. If really needed, a user can adapt the existing regexps and matching field name lists to fit his configuration, but it will require some advanced emacs regexp skills.

I am using generic functions to find, read out, or place the cursor in named fields. These functions always take among the arguments a regexp defining all the fields, and a list of field names. As an example, this call places point (the cursor) at the field "d1-time" that is defined by the regexp org-clock-convenience-clocked-agenda-re and the list of field names in org-clock-convenience-clocked-agenda-fields.

(org-clock-convenience-goto-re-field 'd1-time
					 org-clock-convenience-clocked-agenda-re
					 org-clock-convenience-clocked-agenda-fields)

So, one just needs to modify those two variables.

The best way for me in Emacs to play with regexps and getting the escaping right is to use Emacs' regexp-builder mode.

I need to add some documentation for users to make them aware of these problems. Thank you again for reporting.

[dfeich]

Closing this old bug. The solution to problems with customized org-agenda-prefix-format are documented in the README file under the heading Dealing with changes in org-agenda-prefix-format.