chasing daisies... » Applescript

SNYS v0.41

ordinal — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 14:19:37 +0000

I noticed that SNYS was having trouble with Lion, and I think some of the later Snow Leopard security updates, and wasn’t able to spawn processes properly. I’ve updated it so that it is able to do so. (Basically this just involved re-saving the script as a new application in Applescript Editor and then copying the resources back in.) This is v0.41 which is now available for download at http://daisychase.net/software/snys/SimplenoteYojimboSync.zip as usual.

SNYS v0.4, “Delete all Simplenotes” script, sundry data duplication issues

ordinal — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 22:41:00 +0000

A few people have mentioned that SNYS seems to be duplicating notes recently, which I experienced myself. I’m not entirely sure what caused this – perhaps a brief Simplenote blip – but after some testing, I can say that after resetting sync by deleting all my Simplenotes and re-uploading, SNYS is behaving fine for me.

I’ve added a page that explains how to reset sync – basically, quit SNYS, delete everything in either Yojimbo or Simplenote, and then run SNYS again. Because it is a pain to delete everything in Simplenote manually, and there are often metadata worth preserving in Yojimbo, I’ve also uploaded the script I use to delete all of my Simplenotes automatically, which I’ve had to use while testing a few times.

Finally, I’ve uploaded version 0.4 of SNYS, which is basically the same as the previous one but has some more data checks to try to make sure that, if there is a communication issue, it is less likely to duplicate your notes. If it finds what it thinks is a zero note count in either Yojimbo or Simplenote, it will ask you to confirm before syncing. The auto-update function should alert you of this, or you can get it from the usual page.

Mass add keywords to iPhoto with Launchbar

ordinal — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 13:57:23 +0000

I was playing with iPhoto this morning and decided that, really, it would be better to properly tag my photos and use smart collections, rather than have them in unwieldy folders which clutter up the left sidebar, and which I can’t delete without losing the associated classifications. (If I don’t keep a folder called “Cats” current, I’ll never be able to find all pictures of cats again, unless the next version of iPhoto includes an automatic cat recognition routine, which actually isn’t all that bizarre an idea, but anyway.)

The first thing I discovered was that I couldn’t see any way to add tags – or rather, keywords, as iPhoto calls them – en masse, which seemed very odd. (It may have a mechanism which I didn’t find.) But that’s what we have Applescript for isn’t it?

Edit: after writing this post I was informed that Cmd-K brings up a list of tags in iPhoto, which can be used to mass tag photos. However, I shall keep this blog post here because (a) the Launchbar integration means it can easily be done via the keyboard and (b) the script itself might be useful for people as a starting point for keyword manipulation in iPhoto.

So I started writing a script to do this. The second thing that I noticed was that, in some cases, keywords just were not being added to pictures, and I found that iPhoto silently refuses to add keywords via Applescript which don’t actually exist in its list of keywords. A bit annoying, but surely, easy to overcome – after all, we can get a list of all keywords in iPhoto, so just check that first, and if the keyword doesn’t exist, add it before trying to tag the photos. Surely.

The third thing that I learnt this morning was that it seems to be entirely impossible to add new keywords to iPhoto via Applescript. You just can’t do it – you can’t make a new keyword at all, it kicks up errors when you try, including the ever helpful “AppleEvent failed”.

So the result is a script which does mass add keywords, but only keywords which already exist. It warns you if they don’t rather than just failing; you’ll have to add them to one photo manually first. But I have now replaced my manual folders with smart folders and events, and my sidebar looks a lot tidier. I also now find it a lot quicker to tag photos using the keyboard only, via Launchbar.

Here’s the script to download:

Applescript: iPhoto mass add keywords

You can run the script itself to tag the selected pictures and specify the keyword via a dialog box, or you can run the script using Launchbar and specify the keyword within Launchbar, by the usual method of finding the script, pressing space, typing the keyword and pressing return.

Simplenote Yojimbo Sync v0.3(1)

ordinal — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:25:17 +0000

As the previous post suggest I’ve uploaded a new version of SNYS, 0.3. This has some more extensive logging options as some people are still having issues, but for those who aren’t, this version stays running and repeats the sync once per hour. You might wish to have it run on startup if you are that way inclined; I am.

Download from the dedicated page as usual.

Edit: Please can you post (a) the version of OS X you are using and (b) the version of Yojimbo you are using, when reporting a bug? I have a feeling that there may be some subtle Applescript differences involved here, and even if there aren’t, I’d like to eliminate that possibility.

Applescript and regular actions

ordinal — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:28:07 +0000

I was wondering how I could have Simplenote Yojimbo Sync (henceforth, SNYS) running regularly, and thinking of all sorts of methods involving launchd, but actually it seems very simple to do with Applescript, which is where I should have looked in the first place.

From p76 of the Applescript Language Guide:

Stay-open script applications can perform periodic actions, even in the background, as long as the script application is running.

What I need therefore is an idle handler.

If a stay-open script application includes an idle handler, AppleScript sends the script application periodic idle commands—by default, every 30 seconds—allowing it to perform background tasks when it is not performing other actions.

So, I will put one of those in and it will run the sync periodically and everything will be happy. That should be straightforward.

Simplenote Yojimbo Sync v0.11

ordinal — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:46:03 +0000

This is the first version of my syncing script between Simplenote and Yojimbo. (Well, v0.1 was the first, and was pretty much the same just without Growl support, but this is the first public version.)

If you would care to try it out, I would be delighted – please leave any comments, bug reports etc on this post. (Even just “works as expected” would be appreciated.)

Documentation and download

(see main project page)

Edit: Of course, Sod’s Law, there was an installation bug in the initial version. I’ve now fixed this.