alphapapa
commented
10 months ago Hello Grant,
Well, the bottom line is that the code in org-sidebar is released under the GPL, so you can do all the things the license allows, including modifying and redistributing the code under the same license. Ethically, if you copy code from other authors, you should credit them accordingly: at least, in the source code comments, and probably in the documentation as well.
Now I can't stop you from doing those things, and I wouldn't necessarily want to. But generally I'd prefer to improve the implementation in this package rather than splinter it--it's better for users and developers that way.
IIUC your concerns are twofold: 1) improvements to the tree-window functionality, and 2) the dependencies on org-super-agenda and org-ql.
Regarding 1: Of course, I'd be glad to have improvements to this package's code. As you can see, there are no outstanding pull requests, so it's not as if I'm declining to accept patches. As with anything else, unless the changes are trivial fixes, it's best to discuss them first, so as not to waste anyone's time in writing code that won't get merged. I don't know of any such outstanding discussions on this repo, but I might be wrong; as I always say, feel free to ping me on a discussion if I forget about it. I have a lot of packages, as well as work outside of FOSS, so my time for any one package is limited.
The most important improvement for the tree view that I know of is discussed in #36. As long as that remains unfixed, the tree view seems of limited usefulness to me. Even though I like the feature and wrote it myself, because of that, I hardly use it. I think it could probably be fixed with careful use of various hooks in one or both buffers, but I haven't spent the time to try yet. The author of the org-transclusion package might have insights that could help.
Regarding 2: It might sound prideful, but I think that org-super-agenda and org-ql are packages that every Org user ought to have installed, anyway; I think that most users who don't use them simply aren't aware of how useful they are, and if it were demonstrated to them, they'd probably start using them. At the same time, I respect the principle of independent functionality, and even among my own packages, I don't make them depend on each other unnecessarily.
And while I understand the desire to have the tree view available independently, I also don't think it's enough to justify being in a package of its own, especially while the issue mentioned in #36 remains.
Finally, I'm careful with org-super-agenda and org-ql to make them well-behaved "citizens", i.e. merely having them installed shouldn't cause any problems for any user (and if such a problem were found, I'd fix it quickly).
So I think my position is: I'd rather the tree-sidebar code not be published separately. I think it wouldn't be good for users or developers, especially in its current state. If there are improvements to be made (and there are), I'd like them to be made here, and I'd be grateful if such improvements were contributed by interested users and developers.
Ultimately, what would be best for everyone is if the tree-sidebar functionality were improved and refined and upstreamed into Org itself. Since it's a feature that doesn't depend on org-ql or org-super-agenda, this package could serve as an "incubator" for its functionality (keeping the FSF copyright assignment in mind during development of it). Then ideally it could be upstreamed; I think it would be obviously useful enough that there wouldn't be much objection to doing so.
What do you think? Thanks.
localauthor
Thaodan
Hello! This isn't an issue so much as a discussion starter.
I've used the sidebar-tree feature of org-sidebar for quite a while now and I've found myself modifying bits and pieces of it here and there over time. So, I've finally broken down and made a repo/package containing only that feature, called "org-tree". (Not convinced that's a good name.)
One justification for extracting the tree feature into a separate package, in my case, is to separate it from the fairly weighty org-ql and org-super-agenda dependencies. It seems to be quite distinct from the parts of org-sidebar that use those packages --- case in point, it seems to function just fine without them.
This version, additionally, addresses some of the requests that have been made here, most notably adding read-only-mode and follow-mode functionality. But then, it also loses the outline-mode interoperability. (Sad face.)
demo here: https://i.imgur.com/bOpFx6u.mp4
I wanted to ask you for your thoughts on this, before I publicize anything, since it's so heavily derived from your work. Any thoughts/notes? Would you like credit, copyright, etc., in any particular form? What do you think?
In any case, thanks for your sharing all your work and Emacs savvy!