smarg19

Damn. I'm just reading thru the old posts. I'm astounded at how buggy this workflow was for so long. I'm getting close to releasing the rewrite tho, and I'm pretty excited. It's faster, it's cleaner, and it's FAR less buggy, but it has all of the same UI. I just wanted to say, to everyone who's posted and downloaded this workflow, thanks for sticking with me and with ZotQuery. It's been a fun, if bumpy, ride.

Good thought. How about abstract or notes for Large Text (depending on which exists). Also, I will have the ability to alter some of this functionality at the top of the code. The new version (like the old version) has the ability to limit ZotQuery to only your personal items (excluding all items in Group Libraries). It will theoretically be possible to alter the exact scope of zot, but I would recommend against it. This version will be much faster in searching, so there won't be any need to limit it for speed. And all the old, more specific query scopes will be available. I'm not going to advertise a way to fiddle with that, because it could easily break things. Also, I will add a simple way to change what Quick Copy does. So hopefully this will be configurable enough to be as helpful as possible for people, but stable enough to not be easily broken.

Perfect. let me know of you're ever in Ohilly for those beers

First, what version of the workflow do you have? Second, what version of Skim do you have? Third, you did have the config PDF open when you tried to set the highlighting colors, correct? The second error in the debug log would suggest that Skim wasn't open (or at least a Skim document wasn't open).

Damn. This is well done. Very nice, thank you.

Would users find it useful if I included my .docx template and .css file for previewing in Marked.app? These things can be found in my GitHub repo, but I've thought that maybe users would like this bundled in. Thoughts?

Question for any user: I am working on the ground-up rewrite of ZotQuery. My goal is to make the workflow faster and cleaner, simpler to support, and just plain better. However, the actual UI won't really change. Except, for some additions to Alfred and the workflow-writing community in general that I want to incorporate. The two I am putting up for suggestion are Large Type and Quick Copy. In any script filter, you can use CMD+L on some item to display some text in Alfred's large text box, or CMD+C on an item to copy text to the clipboard. So, the question: What should ZotQuery copy to the clipboard for each item, or what should it display? How would this functionality suit your needs best?

UPDATE Version 1.0.5 fixes a small bug in the template variables. Probably didn't effect anyone, but definently won't now. Also, Pandoc 1.13 is now out. This is a major upgrade, which includes the .docx files as input files. This means you can convert Word files to Markdown files! Anyways, once you update pandoc, you will need to run dr:config again for Pandoctor to update its internals for the new version of pandoc. This will then show .docx in the inputs window, and will properly interface with Pandoc 1.13. So, enjoy the newest versions of Pandoc and Pandoctor!

Well ZotFile acts automatically as well. You can point it at your Downloads folder and have it link and rename the newest Zotero item and newest download. But, PDF management is probably the next thing I'm going to cogitate on. I recently finished a Python script to (somewhat) intelligently tell if a PDF is OCR'd. I then threw this into a Hazel rule. But I'm not yet fully happy with my PDF management. I need to find a nice mixture of tags, directories, and flow to put my neurotic mind at rest. Ps. Skimmer has a script to search for ISBNs, DOIs, or fall back to user selected cap words to launch a Google Scholar search. That's the beginning of another idea I have for automating a shitty part of PDF management for scholars. Hopefully one day I'll finish it. Pps. I'd love to see that script. And to hear about your PDF management system.

Honestly, it would probably be a good ebook manager. It just requires a little imagination There is a wonderful add-on for Zotero called ZotFile. This would allow you to store all of your ebooks in one directory with a consistent naming convention. Then, you could use Zotero's killer feature (citation scraping from the web) as an easy way to create a "Wishlist". If you're online and come across an ebook you'd like but don't have, save it to Zotero. Once you've downloaded the actual epub or pdf, use ZotFile to link that file to the proper item (moving it and renaming it automatically). So, all linked items you have books for; all unlinked items are "Wishlist". Then, you could organize your books into Groups or even use Tags. "Sci-Fi", "Coding", etc. I think it would work pretty well.

I'm taking that as a compliment

Does this mean to say that you didn't mean "Git" to be a reference to your vast command line, VCS superiority?

Exactly. As a start, you probably can't get this to be as easy a transition for every workflow writer. So I would take the low hanging fruit. Plus, a lot of writers do structure things this way (I know Dean and I both do for all of our workflows). But raguay's idea is good too. Have the parsing script accept STDIN, then I can pipe a script to it or paste in debugger XML. Either way, it should be relatively easy.

Option 2 basically. For example, in Terminal I run python alfred_filter.py query | florian_parser.py | pbcopy. My workflow's alfred_filter.py script takes query and outputs the standard XML that Alfred expects. But instead of being run in Alfred, I pass that XML to florian_parser.py (just a dummy name, and Python is a personal preference ). You take the XML and parse it into your JSON schema. I could then copy that JSON schema to start building the JSON for the demo. To my mind, it shouldn't actually be too hard. The conversion from XML to JSON isn't overly tricky, and your JSON schema pretty closely mirrors Aflred's XML schema. So, the only thing your asking workflow authors to do is run their scripts externally from Alfred once to start the JSON generation.

Touché.

Also, there is at least the potential for writing a script that accepts Alfred's XML. I know that many workflow authors write their scripts separately (not in Alfred's internal Run Script boxes), so for the alfred['list'] items at least, you could parse the XML output of a workflow's filter script into the proper JSON. This would act as a sort of "recorder", making the JSON creation even simpler. You could simply pipe the XML output from one script into the "listener" script for parsing.

This is a wonderful idea, but as for suggestions, there probably needs to be some way to simplify JSON creation. I have only cursorily read over the docs, so I haven't thought deeply about this, but some sort of bridge from .plist to your JSON schema, even if it only gets you part of the way (which is almost certainly going to be the case), would likely increase adoption. I for one will look to implement this. I think it's a great idea and great implementation so far.

No problem Robin

Great idea. Here are 4 that I use almost every day: MarkdownBulletin: you've said it already @deanishe, but it's worth repeating. I post on the forums frequently enough, and this workflow (by Vítor) makes that bearable, sometimes even enjoyable. PirateBay: say what you want about the PirateBay, but if you use it, you need this workflow. Period. Great workflow from Florian. Packal Updater: Packal is swiftly becoming the default way to share Alfred workflows. This is great for this burgeoning community and Shawn did a great job on it. But the functionality was only halfway there until he also put out this workflow to keep up with all of your Packal-downloaded workflows. This is a must have. Evernote: I love Evernote. I love Alfred. I love CarlosSz. Simple as that. PS. I link to all the authors' Packal pages because there is a mechanism to leave a PayPal donation for the author. I use the hell out of the some of the workflows on this forum and (now) on Packal. These are not simple to make or to maintain, and I for one try to give just a little thank you.

Now I can't tell where the trolling ends and the laziness begins... Zotero: https://www.zotero.org/ And I quote:

Ha. Well, it can if you store the metadata of your ebooks in Zotero, then link to the actual ebook file from the Zotero item. In that case, you would be able to search your ebooks and open then from ZotQuery. So, yes, yes it can manage your ebook collection ;D

To any and all ZotQuery users, I am working currently on a ground-up rewrite of the workflow. It will be faster and (hopefully) simpler to maintain. However, this rewrite is probably the best time to suggest features or functionality you think would make the workflow better. I can't promise that I will actually implement anything, but I would love to hear your thoughts on how ZotQuery could work better for you. stephen

Perhaps an odd question, but will it be possible to view download stats for your own workflows?

It seems it would be fairly trivial to add the converse BBCode to Markdown functionality. I, for one, would use that alot.

Perfect. The magic of the "hit it to fix it" approach