A feature idea: An alternative org-mode input format

[John Wiegley]

Hi all,

I was thinking of creating a separate tool for translating specially formatted
Org-mode files into Ledger files. For example, this entry:

2023-01-10 Adobe Acrobat Pro
; ID: 076497DC-45F7-43EC-BFDA-00177EFC3C0D
; CREATED: [2023-01-25 Wed 21:40]
Expenses:Administrative $33.59
Equity:Admin:Somebody

Would be processed from this Org-mode entry:

* [2023-01-10 Tue] Adobe Acrobat Pro
| Expenses:Administrative | $33.59 |
| Equity:Admin:Somebody | |
:PROPERTIES:
:ID: 076497DC-45F7-43EC-BFDA-00177EFC3C0D
:CREATED: [2023-01-25 Wed 21:40]
:END:

Now, why might you want to record Ledger entry in Org-mode? Because you get
these added benefits:

- Org-mode's hierarchical organization, narrowing, searching, filtering
- Org-mode tags become Ledger tags for the whole transaction
- Org-mode properties become Ledger metadata for the whole transaction
- You can use Org-attach to attach files to entries
- You can use cross-linking to jump between entries
- You can use the agenda and calendar to review entries on given dates

There's already a Haskell library for parsing Org-mode files, so I was
thinking that building this as a UNIX tool shouldn't be but a few days work.
It would be run as follows:

org2ledger ledger.org | ledger -f - reg

John

[Alexandre Rademaker]

The table would be just a normal content, right? Is the format below more regular for org-mode?

* [2023-01-10 Tue] Adobe Acrobat Pro

:PROPERTIES:
:ID: 076497DC-45F7-43EC-BFDA-00177EFC3C0D
:CREATED: [2023-01-25 Wed 21:40]
:END:

| Expenses:Administrative | $33.59 |
| Equity:Admin:Somebody | |

I am curious about the use cases for the benefits you described.

Best,
Alexandre

[MC Mabele]

Hi John,

I’m a heavy user of org. This tool would be cool.

Regards,


Sent from my iPhone

> On Feb 9, 2023, at 9:41 PM, John Wiegley <jwie...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi all,

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[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2023-02-10, at 03:31, Alexandre Rademaker <arade...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The table would be just a normal content, right? Is the format below more regular for org-mode?
>
> * [2023-01-10 Tue] Adobe Acrobat Pro
> :PROPERTIES:
> :ID: 076497DC-45F7-43EC-BFDA-00177EFC3C0D
> :CREATED: [2023-01-25 Wed 21:40]
> :END:
>
> | Expenses:Administrative | $33.59 |
> | Equity:Admin:Somebody | |
>
>
> I am curious about the use cases for the benefits you described.

Another thing you could easily do would be to use org-capture with this.

Best,

--
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

[Eric S Fraga]

On Thursday, 9 Feb 2023 at 11:40, John Wiegley wrote:
> I was thinking of creating a separate tool for translating specially formatted
> Org-mode files into Ledger files. For example, this entry:

Why not just use ob-ledger? Then your entry would look like

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
#+PROPERTY: header-args:ledger :tangle ledgerfile

* Adobe Acrobat Pro

:PROPERTIES:
:ID: 076497DC-45F7-43EC-BFDA-00177EFC3C0D
:CREATED: [2023-01-25 Wed 21:40]
:END:

#+begin_src ledger
2023-01-10 Adobe Acrobat Pro

Expenses:Administrative $33.59
Equity:Admin:Somebody

#+end_src
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

The only negative aspect would be having to repeat the description of
the entry.

Tangling would create the ledgerfile which you can then process using
other babel src blocks or directly with ledger on the command line.

--
Eric S Fraga via gnus (Emacs 30.0.50 2023-01-06) on Debian 11.5

[Boyd Kelly]

Maybe then a use case would be to use the orgzly android app to enter ledger transactions on mobile. 

There is a lack of mobile tools....

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Boyd Kelly

www: http://www.coastsystems.net

Tel: +1 604 837-0765