Feedback on user expectation

[franburstall]

This is less a bug report and more a brief account of what one user hoped to get from activities. I set up an activity that I usually build by hand on startup containing 4 buffers: two org-mode, one mastodon and my org agenda. Sadly the latter two do not support bookmark and so activities-resume failed (in a very helpful way that signposted the issue).

Anyway, the punchline is that the restriction to bookmark-able buffers will severely limit the usefulness of this package for me.

[alphapapa]

Hi Fran,

Thanks for the report. First impressions are valuable feedback.

FWIW, org-ql-view buffers do support bookmarks, and thereby activities.el and burly.el, etc. If you can rewrite your agenda buffer in terms of an org-ql query, that problem should be solved.

I can't help you with mastodon, but I'd guess that adding bookmark support to it shouldn't be hard, and it would be a good thing to add regardless of activities.

Anyway, activities can restore three kinds of buffers: 1) those that have bookmark support; 2) file-backed buffers; 3) buffers that are already open in Emacs and can be selected by name (like the *scratch* buffer).

And that is not so much a restriction as it is simply what is possible. If a major mode isn't a simple file-backed mode, someone has to write code to save and restore its state. And it wouldn't make sense to write support for individual major modes in this library when Emacs already has the bookmark system, which serves this purpose in a way that can be used across Emacs.

Having said that, a simple workaround might only take a few lines of code, e.g. something like this:

(add-hook 'mastodon-mode
          (lambda ()
            (setq-local bookmark-make-record-function
                        (lambda ()
                          `((handler . (lambda (_bookmark)
                                         (call-interactively #'mastodon))))))))

That might suffice to bookmark the mastodon buffer in its default state. All that matters generally is that the handler function returns with the current buffer being the desired one.

[franburstall]

3) buffers that are already open in Emacs and can be selected by name (like the *scratch* buffer).

Thanks for the clear explanation. For my limited purpose, this solves the problem: I fire `org-agenda` and `mastodon` to get their buffers open and then do `activities-resume`. I will also experiment with bookmarks given your clear example: I wonder if something similar would work for org agenda (or proced or....)

…

On Sat, 3 Feb 2024 at 18:40, Adam Porter ***@***.***> wrote: Hi Fran, Thanks for the report. First impressions are valuable feedback. FWIW, org-ql-view buffers do support bookmarks, and thereby activities.el and burly.el, etc. If you can rewrite your agenda buffer in terms of an org-ql query, that problem should be solved. I can't help you with mastodon, but I'd guess that adding bookmark support to it shouldn't be hard, and it would be a good thing to add regardless of activities. Anyway, activities can restore three kinds of buffers: 1) those that have bookmark support; 2) file-backed buffers; 3) buffers that are already open in Emacs and can be selected by name (like the *scratch* buffer). And that is not so much a restriction as it is simply what is possible. If a major mode isn't a simple file-backed mode, someone has to write code to save and restore its state. And it wouldn't make sense to write support for individual major modes in this library when Emacs already has the bookmark system, which serves this purpose in a way that can be used across Emacs. Having said that, a simple workaround might only take a few lines of code, e.g. something like this: (add-hook 'mastodon-mode (lambda () (setq-local bookmark-make-record-function (lambda () `((handler . (lambda (_bookmark) (call-interactively #'mastodon)))))))) That might suffice to bookmark the mastodon buffer in its default state. All that matters generally is that the handler function returns with the current buffer being the desired one. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#19 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABLWERSUIAZM4MITVVBZZDLYR2AA3AVCNFSM6AAAAABCYGAKPOVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMYTSMRVGQZDKMRSGE> . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[franburstall]

I will also experiment with bookmarks

This also gives a complete solution once I realised that handlers need to be symbols not lambdas. Thus the following was enough for activities to save and restore my activity:

;; make mastodon and org agenda bookmark-able to some degree
(defun my/agenda-bookmark (_bookmark)
  (org-agenda nil " "))

(defun my/mastodon-bookmark (_bookmark)
  (mastodon))

(add-hook 'org-agenda-mode-hook
          (lambda ()
            (setq-local bookmark-make-record-function
                        (lambda ()
                          `((handler . my/agenda-bookmark))))))

(add-hook 'mastodon-mode-hook
          (lambda ()
            (setq-local bookmark-make-record-function
                        (lambda ()
                          `((handler . my/mastodon-bookmark))))))

Clearly I should write a macro if I was going to do this more often!

Anyway, feel free to close the ticket. Thanks for the advice (and the nice package).