• Plain Text to OmniFocus
  This is great stuff. I've been wanting an easy way to bridge the gap between the plain-text project management I do with Taskpaper files in my project folders, and the daily life/work task management I do in OmniFocus (switched back last week). Exciting!
• dotfiles
  Opinionated Dotfiles for zsh and MacVim. Lots of good stuff in here.
• Address Book URLs
  Now if I can make nvALT recognize addressbook:// urls, you could make round-trip links to connect notes to Address Book entries...
• HTML5 Please - Use the new and shiny responsibly
  A very handy reference for HTML5 and CSS3 with notes about browser compatibility and other pitfalls.
• Dumping Google Search
  Hooray, MacSparky is a DuckDuckGo convert! I haven't used Google search for about a year now, and have never missed it.

Related posts:

1. Connecting nvALT and Address Book
2. Address Book search and Skype from the command line
3. iOS App Review: Reading List

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Web excursions: February 1, 2012 — February 24, 2012

I wrote a while back about some Day One geekery, and shared the git wrapper I set up for bagging some of my larger commit messages to Day One entries automatically. Then Rob went and asked me if I could do something similar with TaskPaper, logging archived tasks to Day One on the fly. Had to try it.

I built the script using the newer query syntax, and I find it a little more stable than the old project-by-project parsing method (nice work, Jesse). To use it, you just need a TaskPaper document with at least one project and an “Archive:” section, and Day One with the CLI tool installed.

• Using the frontmost document in TaskPaper, it grabs all the @done tasks¹ (with or without a date) that aren’t already in the “Archive” project for processing.
• It goes through a few of my common “in-process” tags (@na, @priority, @waiting) and removes them if they exist on a @done task (they’re meaningless after completion).
• Then it looks to see if there’s a @project tag, and if not, it adds one for the project the task was in when it was archived (I think this is default TaskPaper behavior…).
• The full text content of each task (complete with Markdown-style list delimiter and all of the project/date tags you’d want in a log entry) is added to a string.
• Each @done task is then moved to the “Archive” project.
• The name of the parent file and the list of all the tasks you just archived are sent as a single entry to Day One using the dayone CLI tool.

I’m not certain that the end results of using this are superior to logging commit messages. With commit messages I’m talking about what I just did and noting any issues; just being more verbose in general. This technique is a really convenient way to log, though, if you’re already a TaskPaper (and Day One) user, and works perfectly as a supplement to other logging methods.

As you archive your tasks, they get dropped into a calendar view in ready-to-display Markdown format. It’s faster and prettier than to trying to maintain and sort archives of finished tasks in TaskPaper. Given that this is pretty much automatic in my current workflow, I’m just going to let both logging systems churn for a while and see if one or the other isn’t pulling its weight.

The script is thoroughly commented. Probably unnecessarily so for such a short task (I’m pretty sure there’s more comment than code in there). See below for brief installation instructions, and click here to open it directly in AppleScript Editor.

set archivedTasks to ""
tell application "TaskPaper"
	tell front document
		-- don't care which file your log entry came from?
		-- comment the next line out
		set archivedTasks to "## " & name & return
		repeat with _task in search with query "project != Archive and @done"
			if entry type of _task is not project type then
				-- remove common tags that won't matter after archiving
				repeat with _tag in {"na", "next", "priority", "waiting"}
					if exists (tag named _tag of _task) then delete tag named _tag of _task
				end repeat
				-- if there's no project tag on the task, 
				-- add the task's current project as a tag
				if not (exists (tag named "project" of _task)) then
					tell _task to make tag with properties {name:"project", value:(name of containing project of _task as rich text)}
				end if
				-- append the full text of the entry, including tags, to our log
				set archivedTasks to archivedTasks & (text line of _task)
				-- archive it
				move entry id (id of _task) to beginning of entries of project "Archive"
			end if
		end repeat
	end tell
end tell
-- send the accumulated results to Day One via the command line tool
-- http://dayoneapp.com/faq/#commandlineinterface
-- You'll need to run `ln -s "/Applications/Day One/Day One.app/Contents/MacOS/dayone" /usr/local/bin/dayone` to have it accessible at this path
do shell script "echo " & (quoted form of archivedTasks) & "|tr -d \"\\t\"|/usr/local/bin/dayone new"

Just copy the script into AppleScript Editor (or click the handy link) and save it as a compiled script in ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/TaskPaper (creating the folder if it’s not there). If you have the AppleScript menubar item enabled in AppleScript Editor preferences, you’ll be able to access the script from within TaskPaper. It’s really only convenient if you have a hotkey, though. Keyboard Maestro, FastScripts, Launchbar, System Preferences… whatever your poison, just make it easy.

Again, you’ll need to have the dayone CLI tool linked to /usr/local/bin/dayone (or modify the path in the script). If you have Day One installed in the standard /Applications directory, just run this in Terminal:

ln -s "/Applications/Day One/Day One.app/Contents/MacOS/dayone" /usr/local/bin/dayone

Thanks for the idea, Rob!

Related posts:

1. A few scripts for TaskPaper users
2. Totally TaskPaper
3. Taskpaper Date Scripts

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Log TaskPaper archives to Day One

Block quoting

The first of the blockquoting tools, “Blockquote Selection,” just adds a “>” and a space before every line in the selection which contains text. It preserves existing indentation and is best for quoting single paragraphs quickly or for large chunks with code blocks and other indented text you want to keep that way.

The second version, “Convert Indents to Quote Levels,” is for turning hierarchically-indented text (using tabs, not spaces) into nested blockquotes in Markdown format. In essence, it swaps tabs for >‘s. You can turn a conversation like this:

Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum 

    exercitationem ullam corporis 

        suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea 

            commodi consequatur? 

        Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea 

voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?

into this:

> Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum

>> exercitationem ullam corporis

>>> suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea

>>>> commodi consequatur?

>>> Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea

> voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?

Which previews/converts as something like:

Self-linking URLs

The other big feature, and probably the one that took me the most time this evening, is a service for converting standalone URLs into hyperlinks. If a URL isn’t part of an HTML or Markdown (reference or inline) link, it gets turned into a Markdown-style self-link, which will preview/convert as a hyperlink with the URL itself as the text. This is done by surrounding the URL with angle brackets (<http://yourlink.com>).

This service will ignore anything in an href attribute, anything preceded by ”](“ (assumed to be an inline link), anything on a line that starts with a reference ([title]: ...) and any links that are already “self-linked.” It looks for common punctuation marks at the end of a link and removes them from the conversion (comma, period, etc.). It also does its best to recognize when a paired character (parenthesis, brackets, quotes) exists at the beginning and end of the link so they can be separated from the url without brutally removing every occurence from the link (thus breaking any wikipedia link, et al)¹.

The Service currently only looks for http, https and ftp links. If you have another use case I should consider, let me know.

Unwrap Paragraphs updated

The Unwrap Paragraphs service I added the other day has had a small dose of “smart” added to it. It won’t mess with your code blocks or other specially-formatted text now, and should do a much better job of concatenating words that were hyphenated when the text was hard-wrapped to begin with. Let me know how it goes, I’m definitely looking to improve this one. All of them, really, so don’t be shy with the feedback.

Download

You can grab the whole pack of Services and read up on the rest of the included tools on the Markdown Service Tools project page. There’s a readme included in the download (and I just updated it and the documentation) with the full contents of that page, so feel free to download directly below and browse that on your own.

Related posts:

1. Markdown Service Tools 1.3
2. Some Chrome love for the Markdown Service Tools
3. Unwrap Paragraphs for the Markdown Service Tools

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Markdown Service Tools get blockquotes, self-links and more

Running a local copy of ThinkUp isn't terribly difficult, but I won't go into a full list of instructions here. There are great instructions on the ThinkUp site for both local installations and running it in the cloud. If you have web sharing turned on, though, and you put it in your Sites folder, you're most of the way there. I point a virtual host² named "think" to it, and make that the home URL for my Fluid browser.

Click the icon image above to get the full version (or right click and save the linked file). In the general preferences for a Fluid ThinkUp SSB, just use the "Change" button under "Application Icon" and select the 'png' file you downloaded.

Related posts:

1. A cleaner HootSuite icon for Fluid/Prism
2. Minor update to Instapaper Beyond (1.4)
3. Grabbing a Mac app’s icon: building blocks

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at A Fluid icon for ThinkUp

The basis for the script is the fact that–little to my knowledge–TextExpander traps a delimiter sequence and leaves the selection in place while it expands it. This means that if your shell/AppleScript snippet wants to access the selected text after a single-character trigger, it can. It doesn’t store this information within TextExpander, so it takes some AppleScript shenanigans to get the selection from any given program. This is hugely frustrating because “selected text” is handled differently in almost every app, leading to a thousand permutations if you want a universally-capable snippet. However, it works, and the solution that Chetan came up with is a great start on this.

The experiment also makes use of a trick I learned from Joe Workman which allows you to call a “library” shell snippet within other snippets to create a “require” statement and reuse code within other snippets. In this case, it’s calling an AppleScript to get the selection from MarsEdit and insert it between characters. If there’s no selection, you get paired characters.

Chetan’s first version is available on github. My first addition to this script was to add a “%|” cursor placement so that your cursor was between the paired characters after expansion. I also added a block to check the frontmost app and allow the script to be expanded to any AppleScript-able application. TextEdit is the only additional app I’ve worked out so far. My version is available as a fork of Chetan’s on github. You can download or subscribe to it using the raw version of the TextExpander group. Set up the group so that it only expands in the applications you have scripted for; by default this is just MarsEdit and TextEdit. The application-specific settings are available when you select the group’s folder icon after installing it in TextExpander.

As you can see in the screenshot to the right, the group consists of one AppleScript for gathering the selection (load the TextExpander group to see the actual script), and a series of plain text snippets that call the AppleScript snippet using the %snippet:triggername% syntax. In mine (shown), the %| places the cursor before the right character of the pair after expansion. Each snippet is triggered with the left character; in the case of square brackets, you would select text and type [. If no text is selected, you’ll just get “[]”, otherwise your selection will be wrapped in square brackets.

Then I went down a rabbit hole… I really wanted more intelligent pairing so that it wouldn’t pair if there was a character to the right, and would skip a character right if the adjacent character was already a quote. TextMate style. This proved to be nearly impossible, but you can find my experiments in this area in a branch off my main repo. The biggest issue is that I can’t control cursor placement from an AppleScript snippet. I could probably rewrite the whole thing to include a repeat AppleScript for each set of pairing characters, then call them from another set of plain text snippets, but I pulled myself out of the hole before I got too invested in it. If anyone finds a solution before I dive back in, I’d love to see it!

I’m not adding these to the TextExpander Tools project at this point, but feel free to download, play with, fork and make pull requests on Chetan’s and my repos.

Related posts:

1. Additional Characters for TextExpander
2. TextExpander tools for AppleScript editing
3. Placeholder image TextMate Snippet

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Auto-pairing for MarsEdit and TextEdit using TextExpander

I was actually working on a more complex set of snippets involving some AppleScripting when I decided to build a few of these. I’ll try to post the results of that later today.

The snippets cover basic syntax for if, tell, repeat and setting variables and properties. For if and tell, following the trigger (“if” or “tell”) with a space will create a one-liner and reposition your cursor, following immediately with minus symbol (-) will create a block with an end block and put your cursor back in position for continuing the statement. s= and p= will use the Fill dialog to create set statements and property declarations, respectively.

You can pick up the group using the te-snippets tool, which will allow you to download directly or give you a url you can subscribe to in TextExpander to automatically get updates as the group grows.

Addendum: If it doesn’t come through in the .textexpander file, I should mention that I have the group set up in TextExpander to expand “Only in…” AppleScript Editor. Just select the group in the TextExpander window and set “Expand in:” as needed.

Related posts:

1. Markdown snippets for TextExpander touch
2. New: TextExpander downloads with custom prefixes
3. Additional Characters for TextExpander

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at TextExpander tools for AppleScript editing

I understand why my scalp has never forgiven me for the things I did to it in my teens and twenties.

I understand why my body has never forgiven me for the things I put in it when I was young.

I understand why my future took so long to start.

I understand and accept these things without question.

The unbelievable

I can not comprehend why my ex-girlfriends from my twenties have forgiven me.

I cannot believe my wife puts up with me.

I don’t understand how or why I’ve survived the things I have.

I can’t believe my parents were supportive through the worst of it.

I do not understand or comprehend these things, but I am thankful for them every day.

Related posts:

1. Pescatarianism and changing views
2. Blue Bags: new song with 33% more metaphor
3. Natural language dates for TextExpander

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Unbelievable fortune

Opposite from the “Preserve line breaks” service, this one will look for consecutive lines and merge them together into one paragraph. It handles hyphenated words and won’t mess up em/en dashes in Markdown style (-- or ---). If there’s a newline between two lines, it assumes it’s a new paragraph and treats it as such.

Note: this does currently unwrap list items and code blocks as well. It should be used selectively on paragraph text. I’ll eventually put in the time to come up with a regular expression that will avoid this.

Version 1.3.1 is available on the Markdown Service Tools project page. Somebody owes me a box of Aussie Tim Tams.

Related posts:

1. Markdown Service Tools get blockquotes, self-links and more
2. Some Chrome love for the Markdown Service Tools
3. Markdown Service Tools 1.3

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Unwrap Paragraphs for the Markdown Service Tools

Notably, Force Line Breaks has become Preserve Line Breaks, a slightly more elegant service for getting github-style linebreaks in your documents. If you have a block of text with hard returns in it…

this is a line
this is a line following a hard return

(Multi)Markdown will generally concatenate those into a single paragraph. This service looks for these and adds the two spaces at the end of the line required to convert it into a <br> and preserve your formatting.

Lucky Link is now Auto-link web search, the same idea but it functions a little better. Select some text and run it to get a Markdown link to the top result from a web search for that text.

There are a couple of inclusions, such as cleanup scripts for tables and lists, and minor revisions for other commands. Download it from the Markdown Services project page.

Related posts:

1. Markdown Service Tools get blockquotes, self-links and more
2. Some Chrome love for the Markdown Service Tools
3. Unwrap Paragraphs for the Markdown Service Tools

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Markdown Service Tools 1.3

Related posts:

1. Quick Link: Bro Show #85
2. Notational Velocity update breaks nvALT
3. Downtime apology and upcoming projects

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at The Bro Show 94

Fountain comes from several sources. John August and Nima Yousefi developed Scrippets, which used simple markup to embed screenplay-formatted material in websites. Stu Maschwitz drafted a more extensive spec known as Screenplay Markdown or SPMD, designed for full-length screenplays.

Stu and John discovered that they were simultaneously working on similar text-based screenplay formats, and merged them into what you see here. Other contributors to the spec include Martin Vilcans, Brett Terpstra, Jonathan Poritsky, Kent Tessman, and Clinton Torres.

As did its predecessor, Fountain works great with Marked, thanks to hard work by Martin Vilcans (screenplain) and Jonathan Poritsky. Check it out on the Candler blog.

Related posts:

1. Calling screenwriter nerds
2. Taking the Markdown to Evernote service further
3. Marked 1.3 released, plus 5 free copies!

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Fountain is released, works with Marked!

It’s a little shaky, especially on sites with bad markup. I’d say that right now it has about a 60% success rate. As I have time to work on it I’ll be improving this and adding a bevy of features that may eventually become an App Store submission. We’ll see. This proof-of-concept version¹, however, is free to download. I’ll ask nicely that you please not steal the idea and beat me to the punch.

This build is Lion-only; it won’t run at all on Snow Leopard. I’m not really taking any feature suggestions right now, as I already have an extensive roadmap for it that will turn it into something highly useful in many situations (and I’m quite aware of what it lacks in this state). I would enjoy hearing from you with your reactions, though.

Credit due

This version uses GGReadability by Curtis Hard. You should definitely check out his work-in-progress app, Caffeinated. It’s an RSS reader with Google Reader support and some serious potential. I’m also using HTML2Text for “markdownifying.”

Enjoy.

Download

Related posts:

1. Introducing the Marked Bonus Pack
2. Meet Marky, the Markdownifier
3. Instapaper Beyond Bugs (fixed)

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Introducing Gather, a Cocoa Markdownifier

As of recent versions, Notational Velocity and nvALT have a URL handler for nv:// (or nvalt://). Using the /find/ parameter allows you to initiate a search in NV from a link, e.g. nv://find/abnote%3AJohnny Appleseed. If you use a unique prefix and full name, you can pinpoint a single note without having to create a file or locate the note's ID. The first time you click the link, it will open a search in NV, and pressing Return will create the note and begin editing. Once the note is there, it will locate it instantly the next time you click the link.

I'm using the prefix "abnote:" on my notes. This AppleScript will create the URL entry automatically from the selected entries' first and last names, and you can edit the prefix in the script to be anything you like. Just save it as "Add NV Note.scpt" in ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Address Book and it will show up in your script menu² when you're in Address Book. You can run it on a bunch of entries (it's not optimized to run on an entire large address book, though), or one at a time as you need it.

I wrote this on Lion. I honestly have no idea if it works on anything earlier. It might³.

The script

tell application "Address Book"
	set thePeople to the selection
	repeat with thisPerson in thePeople
		set theName to name of thisPerson as string
		make new url at end of urls of thisPerson with properties {label:"NV Note", value:"nv://find/abnote%3A" & theName}
	end repeat
	save
end tell

Related posts:

1. Address Book search and Skype from the command line
2. nvALT 2.1 in the wild
3. nvALT 1.0.8 progress

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Connecting nvALT and Address Book

For the command line savvy, the gist has been updated as well. Run it with “-h” to see all of the options. There’s even a progress bar in the terminal (default setting).

The big news, though, is that I have this working within Marked. The next version will be able to accept dropped Scrivener projects and provide a compiled preview that updates with changes from Scrivener. No external application needed! That release should be ready relatively soon, I’m putting out a beta for testing this week.

For now, here’s the latest (and probably last) version of ScrivWatcher:

Related posts:

1. ScrivWatcher droplet, an easier live Scrivener preview
2. Preview a full Scrivener document in Marked, live
3. The second Marked giveaway!

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at ScrivWatcher, one more time

My Tech Talk this morning, “40 Tips in 40 Minutes” with David Sparks and Merlin Mann went really well, I think. I had fun doing it, anyway. I put up some show notes at the soon-to-change 40tips.com, if you’re interested. I’m looking forward to seeing David and Merlin with Rob Corddry tomorrow. If you’re around Macworld, you should probably get there early!

Lunch with Shawn Blanc, Stephen Hackett, Brett Kelly, Ben Brooks, and Thomas Brand was awesome¹. Great to meet so many cool people all at once.

I just got back from a clandestine meeting at the Samovar Tea Lounge (I love that place). I had tea. We had laughs. I was shown software. It was amazing. I will pimp the hell out of it when it comes out in the next couple of months. Until then, all I can say is just prepare to have core elements of your workflow change drastically, for the better. That’s the second game-changer I’ve been shown lately but can’t disclose yet. I will go insane if this keeps happening.

Also, if you are in San Francisco right now, swing down to Jillian’s tonight before 11pm and catch up with the TUAW crew. It’s going to be a good time. Low-key, good conversation, and probably drink tickets.

Related posts:

1. On my way to Macworld ’11
2. Notational Velocity ALT 5.3
3. Speaking at Macworld

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at From my Macworld Diary