I'm an avid OmniFocus user and I've been thinking about trying org-mode. The conversion tool on Worg [1] was inadequate because it didn't capture whether the repetition in tasks and it didn't handle the notes field properly for me. I've written a new tool that works directly on the XML database behind OmniFocus. I specifically ignored completed tasks, whether something was flagged, and durations, because I don't use those so I couldn't test them. It is written in Racket [2] and available here:
https://github.com/jeapostrophe/exp/blob/master/of2org.rkt However, once I converted my 1.6M OmniFocus database, I got a 252K org-mode file. Opening this file in org-mode is unbearable. For example, pressing up after opening the document (and having the cursor at the end of the buffer) takes 5 seconds to select the last item. Pressing up again takes 6 seconds. Almost every trivial browsing operation like this takes 5 seconds. (Except expanding the notes fields once a sub-tree has been revealed. That's instant.) Finally, the killer. If I select the last top-level heading and press M-up, Emacs crashes. A section of the stack trace is at the end of this email. I'm happy to send my org-mode file to a developer to try out, but I don't want to post it online. FWIW, the file is 6738 lines long and the final heading starts on line 2632, so M-up is moving a significant number of lines. I updated to the latest git version of org-mode to see if anything was faster, but it wasn't. I find org-mode theoretically appealing, but as it stands, I can't use it because it isn't scalable enough. Are there any techniques to getting around this lack of scalability? I'd appreciated any advice. Best, Jay 1. https://bitbucket.org/legoscia/of2org/src 2. http://racket-lang.org/ -- The stack trace -- Process: Emacs [5146] Path: /Users/USER/*/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs Identifier: org.gnu.Emacs Version: Version 23.3 (9.0) Code Type: X86-64 (Native) Parent Process: launchd [176] Date/Time: 2011-08-05 09:36:46.341 -0600 OS Version: Mac OS X 10.7 (11A511) Report Version: 9 Interval Since Last Report: 201400 sec Crashes Since Last Report: 5 Per-App Interval Since Last Report: 231997 sec Per-App Crashes Since Last Report: 2 Anonymous UUID: 91A4D920-5BEC-4689-B878-21946C6D436B Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGABRT) Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x00007fff5fc00000 VM Regions Near 0x7fff5fc00000: Stack 00007fff5f400000-00007fff5fc00000 [ 8192K] rw-/rwx SM=COW thread 0 --> __TEXT 00007fff61e0e000-00007fff61e43000 [ 212K] r-x/rwx SM=COW /usr/lib/dyld Application Specific Information: objc[5146]: garbage collection is OFF abort() called Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread 0 libsystem_kernel.dylib 0x00007fff867cd82a __kill + 10 1 org.gnu.Emacs 0x00000001000901ae fatal_error_signal + 286 2 libsystem_c.dylib 0x00007fff84905cfa _sigtramp + 26 3 libsystem_kernel.dylib 0x00007fff867cdce2 __pthread_kill + 10 4 libsystem_c.dylib 0x00007fff848b37d2 pthread_kill + 95 5 libsystem_c.dylib 0x00007fff848a4a7a abort + 143 6 org.gnu.Emacs 0x000000010016f31c ns_term_shutdown + 44 7 org.gnu.Emacs 0x00000001000901e4 fatal_error_signal + 340 8 libsystem_c.dylib 0x00007fff84905cfa _sigtramp + 26 9 org.gnu.Emacs 0x00000001000281a0 handle_face_prop + 256 10 org.gnu.Emacs 0x0000000100028b0f handle_stop + 127 11 org.gnu.Emacs 0x000000010002e3b1 next_element_from_string + 273 12 org.gnu.Emacs 0x000000010002b2a1 get_next_display_element + 81 13 org.gnu.Emacs 0x000000010002c6e5 move_it_in_display_line_to + 245 14 org.gnu.Emacs 0x000000010002db9e move_it_to + 302 15 org.gnu.Emacs 0x00000001000393c1 move_it_vertically + 65 16 org.gnu.Emacs 0x000000010004ef95 Fwindow_end + 325 17 org.gnu.Emacs 0x00000001001093f1 Ffuncall + 1201 18 org.gnu.Emacs 0x00000001001463be Fbyte_code + 6814 19 org.gnu.Emacs 0x0000000100108e9c funcall_lambda + 588 20 org.gnu.Emacs 0x0000000100109192 Ffuncall + 594 21 org.gnu.Emacs 0x000000010010aade call1 + 30 -- Jay McCarthy <j...@cs.byu.edu> Assistant Professor / Brigham Young University http://faculty.cs.byu.edu/~jay "The glory of God is Intelligence" - D&C 93
