AppleScript: what do you want to see in the Scrivener Suite?

[xiamenese]

Yes, look at all three ... clearly there are those who like Endnote, and those that prefer Sente. I found I was most comfortable with Bookends. I'd certainly recommend investing in one of them, the one that works for you ... It will save you a huge amount of effort and time.

Mark

[derick]

There is also BibDesk, which has the virtue of being free. I too had created my own bibliographic database (originally in Paradox on Windows 3.1, with scripts to integrate with WordPerfect...) but have happily converted (and easily imported all my old data via .csv). If you're using Pages for your final output, there's a well-documented and maintained set of Applescripts for BibDesk-Pages integration, at http://jhh.med.virginia.edu/main/CiteInPages .

[p a t r i c k]

Hi

Thank you very much derick, I have Sente, Endnote and Bookends all on trial but I will now add BibDesk to my collection

I also like the idea of AppleScript integration with Pages.

I notice that the new Pages in iWork '09 has integration with Endnote but not Sente or Bookends.

I think Apple should be more considerate of these smaller companies that make rather nice programs for their computers.

[jharrison]

There is also BibDesk, which has the virtue of being free. ... If you're using Pages for your final output, there's a well-documented and maintained set of Applescripts for BibDesk-Pages integration, at http://jhh.med.virginia.edu/main/CiteInPages .

The CiteInPages scripts should work reasonably well for initial writing in Scrivener and final formatting in Pages. The in-text working citations are merely unique text sequences, which can be inserted in Scrivener and will transfer to Pages with no problem. The template for dragging citations from BibDesk into Pages will work for dragging citations into Scrivener now. With appropriate Applescript support in Scrivener, the "Insert text citation" script that inserts (multiple) selected citations from BibDesk at the insertion point in Pages could be easily modified to support Scrivener. Alternatively, if Scrivener just supports Applescripting its menus or keystrokes, you could force a "paste" of selected citations in BibDesk at the insertion point in Scrivener, which would yield a nearly equivalent result.

[greenmorpher]

Nisus Writer has gone with Bookends.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard
Publisher, Editor, Business Writer
The Worsley Press

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[xaxa]

Hi Keith,
Three suggestions, if this is still on your mind:
- a property-rich "insertion point" and/or "selection" object, to access and modify the current selection. Including properties like: parent document, start offset, end offset, rich text. Contained by editor, window, document, application; containing: paragraphs, words, characters, attribute runs, etc (the standard text classes).
- a "select"-command as companion, enabling instructions like "select paragraphs 4 tru 6 of current editor", or "select insertion point after selection"
- an "editor" class providing access to the currently displayed text in one of the editors, be it in an edit scrivenings session or not. The editor class would be contained by application, and it would contain documents, selection/insertion point (a class referring to the the currently selected text), and have properties such as: isCurrent, position (upper/lower), scrivening mode (boolean), current document (the one displayed), ...

These may not be easy to implement on the basis of Apple's text engine. Not even the otherwise highly scriptable DevonThink does the current-selection thing properly. But having spent a ridiculous amount of hours on developing inter-application workflows in Applescript, I feel that these are often what makes the difference (Pages 09 is not bad in this regard, but InDesign is still the reference).

Still hoping for AppleScript in 2.1

Martin

[KB]

Thanks for the suggestions!

Still hoping for AppleScript in 2.1

AppleScript is marked as the main feature for 2.1, don't worry...

All the best,
Keith

[igorvol]

In Scrivener 2.0 We have a great opportunity to write notes Can I make these notes to all Projects? Your notes for the entire project is a good idea, but it do not say when they were made? Day and time is very important. In my opinion it should automatically put the date and time as in the magazine ... Can you add this feature?
And your spelling not working as it works in version 1.54. Why?

[KB]

Is this an AppleScript request? If so that is slated for 2.1 or 2.2. As for spelling, it works exactly the same as in 1.54. Check the Spelling and Grammar settings to ensure they aren't set to "Automatic by Language". If this isn't an AppleScript request, then please start a separate thread for tech support.
Thanks,
Keith

[edmo]

Hi Keith and crew,

Altering created/modified dates?

Don't know if this has already been suggested - and don't know for sure if it's not already in Scrivener 2 - but if not, I'd love to be able to use applescript to change the created/modified dates on selected documents within a project.

Why? I've just switched to Snow Leopard, am going to upgrade to Scrivener 2 next week, and am finally going to give up on Mori for my catch-all notes manager (Oh, Jesse, why did you bring apokalypse down upon us?). I've got thousands of notes to export from Mori and import into Scrivener. The only ways I can think of to preserve creation dates for these notes is to either change my system's date/time to match a group of notes' creation date when I export them to rtf files in the Finder, or to modify the creation dates after importing them to Scrivener via applescript. (Of course, if anyone knows of a better way to do this, I'd be extremely grateful).

Thanks. Looking forward to Scrivener 2. Congrats on all the growth and success.

[Nacnud]

I'd love to be able to add a prefix and a suffix to a selection of text, as you can in TextWrangler or BBEdit.

Especially since I already wrote the applescript for TextWrangler, I'd just have to change the application name, set a keyboard shortcut, and be done with that pesky inserting of html comment tags

Duncan

[koen]

Is the following possible with Applescript:

1. Save the project
2. Make back up to local backup drive (external)
3. Sync with Dropbox
4. Close the project.

This would be a great script to execute when I'm done writing on my iMac, leave, and maybe work on it later on my MacBook. If this is not possible, I'd like torequest that

[AmberV]

Yes, this is possible. Scrivener already produces an automatic backup copy in the `~/Library/Application Support/Scrivener/Backups` folder---though that can be changed in preferences. Thus, you can set up a script and attach it to this folder. It would be trivial to disperse copies of any incoming zip files to multiple locations. In fact some people like to skip one stage of that and just change their automatic backup folder to a place on Dropbox. That way whenever Scrivener creates one, it automatically gets uploaded as well as being stored on the local drive. You'd still need a script to copy it to the external drive though; so might as well keep the locations to three, since one of them rotates out older ones.

[Rayz]

Something to clear out all the blank lines at the end of every document in the binder would be nice.

[AmberV]

That's more the type of thing that one would use AppleScript to do. AppleScript isn't so much a suite of extra features---it's a bunch of hooks into the interface and data models that let you make your own features---like this. So for something like what you describe, you would need the ability to trawl through the binder item by item; access to those items text data and the ability to write rich text modifications. All basic stuff in other words.