org-sidebar

This package presents a helpful sidebar view for Org buffers. At the top is a chronological list of scheduled and deadlined tasks in the current buffer (similar to the Org agenda ,but without all its features), and below that is a list of all other non-done to-do items. If the buffer is narrowed, the sidebar only shows items in the narrowed portion; this allows seeing an overview of tasks in a subtree.

Please note: this package is in an early stage of development, so incompatible changes may be made in the future. However, it’s stable and usable now. Feedback is appreciated.

Contents

• Screenshots
• Installation
• Usage
• Changelog
• Notes

Screenshots

Installation

Install these packages (e.g. from MELPA):

• dash
• s

org-ql and org-ql-agenda are also required; they are not on MELPA, but may be found at http://github.com/alphapapa/org-ql. Put them and this file in your load-path.

Usage

Load the package with (require 'org-sidebar) (or use use-package). Then call the commands below.

Customization options are in the org-sidebar group.

Key bindings

In a sidebar buffer, these keys are bound:

RET, mouse-1

Jump to an item in its buffer.

g

Update the sidebar.

q

Hide the sidebar.

Commands

org-sidebar

By default, and when called interactively, this command displays two sidebar windows:

• At the top, a chronological list of scheduled and deadlined tasks in the current buffer
• Below, a list of all other non-done to-do items.

If the buffer is narrowed, the sidebar only shows items in the narrowed portion; this allows seeing an overview of tasks in a subtree.

When called non-interactively, these keyword arguments can be specified to override defaults:

:fns

A list of functions that return Org headline elements (as returned by org-element-headline-parser). Such functions should take a keyword argument :group which causes them to return elements grouped with the -group-by function (or they may omit grouping, in which case the :group argument to this function must not be used).

:group

Whether to call each sidebar function with the :group argument set. Each sidebar function is responsible for performing its own grouping.

:super-groups

A list of org-super-agenda groups. Disables the :group argument.

:header

A string to use as the sidebar window header. Set automatically if not specified.

org-sidebar-ql

This interactive command prompts for an org-ql query and displays matching items in a sidebar. Without prefix, it searches the current Org buffer and performs no grouping. With prefix, it prompts for which buffers/files to search and how to group results. For example, you could:

1. Run M-x org-ql-sidebar RET.
2. At the Query: prompt, type (and (todo "TODO") (priority > "C")).
3. At the Buffers/Files: prompt, type a filename, like ~/org/main.org (or a list of filenames, but spaces are not currently handled in plain strings; use a sexp list of strings instead), or a sexp, like (org-agenda-files) (which evaluates the org-agenda-files function), or leave it blank, to use the current buffer.
4. At the Group by: prompt, select priority.
5. At the Sort by: prompt, select date.

Then a sidebar would be displayed showing all TODO items with priority higher than C in the selected files or buffers, grouped by priority, and sorted by deadline or scheduled date, like:

Custom commands

For examples of defining custom sidebar commands, please see examples.org.

Changelog

0.2-pre

Nothing yet.

0.1

First tagged version.

Notes

This was inspired by this /r/Emacs post, which was inspired by Organized for Atom.

License

GPLv3.