MuppetGate

Is there a replacement for Packal yet? I haven't been keeping up.

Okay, I’ve scored a bit of time to revisit the date app and fix a few bugs. Not everything has been looked at because I’ve got to head off again for a while, but what I have done is: – Upgraded the workflow library – Fixed a few of the scripts that referred to Alfred 2 instead of Alfred 3 (I guess this means Alfred 2 is no longer supported). – A bit of a general code tidy up The big piece of work though, is the restoration of the exclude functionality, which should work properly, but with limitations. To prevent it blowing things up if the search combination doesn’t produce a valid match, I’ve limited the workflow to about 300 attempts to look for a match. After that, I’ll throw an error. So how does it work? Here’s a quick example. Say you’re a busy project bod and you have a piece of work that’s going to take three weeks. So you enter the data expression: dcalc today + 3w And that gives you a date three weeks into the future. But hang on a sec: no one works weekends, so how long will it take if there are no weekends included: dcalc today + 3w exclude weekends So now the date will be further into the future because weekends are not counted as part of the project. (Another way to look at it is if people worked weekends then the project could be brought in at an earlier date). You can exclude individual days: dcalc today + 3w x weekends 28.10.2018 This will exclude all weekends and also the 28th of October. Note that you can just use x or ex instead of exclude. We can exclude other days: dcalc today + 3w x Tuesdays Wednesdays Fridays We can also do ranges: dcalc today + 3w exclude Tuesdays 30.10.2018 to 05.11.2018 02.12.2018 This beast will exclude Tuesdays, all days between the 30.10.2018 and 05.11.2018, and it will also exclude 02.12.2018 We can also do: dcalc today + 3w exclude all except tuesdays Error checking is minimal, but this kind of stuff won’t work: dcalc today + 3w ex all except wednesdays wednesdays dcalc today + 3w x weekends weekdays Because every day has been excluded. The update can be found in the usual place: http://www.packal.org/workflow/date-calculator The usual disclaimers apply, so don't use this to schedule brain surgery. Use a calendar.

Quick reminder folks. The spaces around the + and - are optional. dcalc 31.12.2017-* will work the same as: dcalc 31.12.2017 - *

Unfortunately, no. But I have put in some abbreviations for some of the common functions. * today & the current time # now < yesterday > tomorrow If you want today's date, then just type: dcalc * So the slightly quicker way to do your calculation would be: dcalc mm/dd/yy-* Hope that helps. Mmm, looking at your question again, it looks like the answer is yes.

Yup, try the same thing but add the 'd' at the end to set the result format. 2017-02-25 - 2017-01-01 d

This has got to be the best workflow name ever

Another update. Unfortunately, it's just bug fixes and the removal of the exclude function as it has proved to be too unreliable to be trusted. xilopaint highlighted a problem whereby I wasn't accounting for excluded dates that fell inside the new range once the exclusion was calculated. For example, if I was excluding weekends and which pushed out the date to another weekend, then I wasn't accounting for the new weekend and pushing the date out even further. Having fixed the problem, I realised that it was now possible to enter an expression that the calculator would be unable to fill because date would keep getting pushed further back. Rather than have something that dangerous in the workflow, I decided to pull the functionality all together … sorry! So this latest version of the workflow is pretty much the same, aside from bug fixes and the removal of the exclusions. http://www.packal.org/workflow/date-calculator

Important Note! Do not skip over and surf something else! xilopaint has highlighted a problem with the exclude calculation, so steer clear of it. I'm looking into the tidiest way to fix it, or possibly pulling it altogether because I've never been quite comfortable with excluding something that causes the end result to get further away. It's always been an odd one that. Anyway, don't use it; it'll make you late for stuff.

Good job!

Can't wait to see it!

Hello, I've updated the workflow following a twitter request. You now have a new date format to struggle with (the wordy format) which looks like this: dd mmm yyyy So you can now use abbreviated (three characters only!) month names in expressions. dcalc today - 23 apr 2016 http://www.packal.org/workflow/date-calculator

This should work the same way it worked before: dcalc today - christmas exclude weekends should give you how much time you have until Christmas day excluding weekends.

I think Alfred is meant to be more of a command-line interface: you enter a command, it does something, you're done. Complex GUIs are for long running interactions. I would be more inclined to write a completely separate application and then just call it with a standard Alfred search.

Okay, this doesn't look like it's is going to show up any time soon, so I took Deanishe's advice and looked for an alternative clipboard manager. I've tried a couple of them over the last couple of months, and finally settled on this one: http://copiedapp.com It looks good, balances functionality and weight pretty well and isn't too expensive. It supports rich text and images and it can also share clipboards between a Mac, an iPad and an iPhone on the same iCloud account. It's really useful to be able to take a picture on the iPhone and have it instantly available on the Mac without any faff. Now that I've been running this for a while, I agree with Deanishe: some things are best left to an application crafted to do those things, which is why I turned off Alfred's clipboard function and just run with Copied. I'm not tied in any way to Copied's developer; I just think it's worth a look, especially if you want to share clipboards across devices.

Alfred can't do it, but there is a great workflow which will give you exactly what you want. http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/1122-play-song-quickly-play-songs-albums-and-more-from-itunes/