#+CAPTION: The main Chronometrist buffer, with the enabled extensions [[#time-goals][chronometrist-goal]] ("Targets" column + alerts) and chronometrist-spark ("Graph" column displaying the activity for the past 4 weeks).
Chronometrist and Org time tracking seem to be equivalent in terms of capabilities, approaching the same ends through different means.
+ Chronometrist doesn't have a mode line indicator at the moment. (planned)
+ Chronometrist doesn't have Org's sophisticated querying facilities. (an SQLite backend is planned)
+ Org does so many things that keybindings seem to necessarily get longer. Chronometrist has far fewer commands than Org, so most of the keybindings are single keys, without modifiers.
+ Chronometrist's UI is cleaner, since the storage is separate from the display. It doesn't show tasks as trees like Org, but it uses tags and key-values to achieve that. Additionally, navigating a flat list takes fewer user operations than navigating a tree.
+ Chronometrist data is just s-expressions (plists), and may be easier to parse than a complex text format with numerous use-cases.
In March 2022, work began on the long-awaited Common Lisp port of Chronometrist, which aims to create -
1. a greater variety of backends (e.g. SQLite)
2. a common reusable library for frontends to use,
3. a greater variety of frontends, such as -
* a command line interface (CLI), for UNIX scripting;
* a terminal user inteface (TUI), for those so inclined;
* a CLIM (Common Lisp Interface Manager) GUI [fn:1],
* Qt and Android interfaces using [[https://gitlab.com/eql/lqml][LQML]],
* web frontends (possibly via [[https://common-lisp.net/project/parenscript/][Parenscript]] or [[https://github.com/rabbibotton/clog][CLOG]]),
* and perhaps even an interface for wearable devices!
The port was also driven by the desire to have access to Common Lisp's better performance, and features such as namespaces, a /de facto/ standard build system, multithreading, SQLite bindings, a more fully-featured implementation of CLOS and MOP, and type annotations, checking, and inference.
Chronometrist is written as an Org literate program, which makes it easy to obtain different views of the program source, thanks to tree- and source-block folding, tags, properties, and the =org-match= command.
The canonical source is the =elisp/chronometrist.org= file, which contains source blocks. These are provided to users after /tangling/ (extracting the source into an Emacs Lisp file). [fn:2]
The Org literate program can also be loaded directly using the [[https://github.com/jingtaozf/literate-elisp][literate-elisp]] package, so that all source links (e.g. =xref=, =describe-function=) lead to the Org file. See [[#how-to-literate-elisp][How to load the program using literate-elisp]].
[fn:2] =chronometrist.org= is also included in MELPA installs, although not loaded through =literate-elisp-load= by default, since doing so would interfere with automatic generation of autoloads.
+ [[file:elisp/chronometrist.org]] contains all developer-oriented documentation
If you have tried using Chronometrist, I'd love to hear your experiences! Get in touch with the author and other Emacs users in the Emacs channel on the Jabber network - [[https://conversations.im/j/emacs@salas.suchat.org][xmpp:emacs@salas.suchat.org?join]] ([[https://inverse.chat/#converse/room?jid=emacs@salas.suchat.org][web chat]])
(For help in getting started with Jabber, [[https://xmpp.org/getting-started/][click here]])
You can also hit =<numeric prefix> RET= anywhere in the buffer to toggle the corresponding project, e.g.=C-1 RET= will toggle the project with index 1.
Press =r= to see a weekly report (see =chronometrist-report=)
In the buffers created by the previous three commands, you can press =l= (=chronometrist-open-log=) to view/edit your =chronometrist-file=, which by default is =~/.emacs.d/chronometrist.sexp=.
All of these commands will kill their buffer when run again with the buffer visible, so the keys you bind them to behave as a toggle.
If you wish you could define time goals for some tasks, and have Chronometrist notify you when you're approaching the goal, completing it, or exceeding it, check out the extension [[https://github.com/contrapunctus-1/chronometrist-goal/][chronometrist-goal.el]].
To exit the prompt, press the key it indicates for quitting - you can then edit the resulting key-values by hand if required. Press =C-c C-c= to accept the key-values, or =C-c C-k= to cancel.
I suggest backing up Chronometrist data on each save using the [[https://tildegit.org/contrapunctus/async-backup][async-backup]] package.[fn:4] Here's how you can do that.
[fn:4] It is possible to use Emacs' built-in backup system to do it, but since it is synchronous, doing so will greatly slow down saving of the Chronometrist file.
By default, [[https://github.com/minad/vertico][Vertico]] uses its own sorting function - for some commands (such as =chronometrist-key-values-unified-prompt=) this results in /worse/ suggestions, since Chronometrist sorts suggestions in most-recent-first order.
All variables intended for user customization are listed here. They serve as the public API for this project for the purpose of semantic versioning. Any changes to these which require a user to modify their configuration are considered breaking changes.