cortig

14 minutes ago, Vero said:

Translating the app is only the very tip of the iceberg, as it then opens the door to requiring all documentation and support to be multilingual.

Out of the big ones like Adobe, Microsoft or Apple, support is rarely available in multiple languages (and when they do, it’s sometimes horrible — I’m looking at you Microsoft!!). It happens, but it is far from the rule (I don’t even think OmniGroup offers support in anything other than English). Many apps also don’t provide localized documentation. 

As I mentioned a while back, I wish the app could provide some sort of plug-in/extension for the localization though. That would shift the entire issue on the community of users: Zero liability or responsibility for you — blame the volunteers for not updating the plug-in when it happens 🙂

Anyway, again, I very much appreciate all the work you do on Alfred and I’m just here to say that if you ever want to reconsider, ping me and I’ll do everything I can to help.

Corentin

17 hours ago, deanishe said:

As a one-man dev team, he can have a new build of Alfred available for download within minutes of deciding it's good to go. Inserting a dozen or more translators and proofreaders into the development–release cycle gives you a turnaround time of days to weeks instead.

A number of developers in these situations make some updates available immediately and add point-point release updates with the localizations once they become available.

In most cases though, there isn’t all that much that’s needed for the localization updates and the localizers can easily keep up. Alfred has a string and devoted user base. I’d be surprised if you couldn’t find a good team of volunteers for all languages. In addition, having multiple localizers implies that you’re likely to almost always have someone available to cover up for a quick update when needed. That’s really not the aspect that would worry me the most.

Alfred is faaaaaarrrrr from the only one-man dev team app I’ve worked with. The first app I ever localized for instance was FinderPop from Turly O'Connor and back then, I had to redo most of the localization by hand through RedEdit for every update and we never had much of an issue (tools improved with MacOS X though 🙂 ).

Workload-wise, I’m more worried about the structure of the app. Not everything is in .lproj right now for instance. I also haven’t looked in the .nib, but I that’s also a frequent point of concern (using dynamic fields instead of fixed size etc.). The app might need some up front restructuring to ease the localization process in the long term, but once that’s taken care of, it could be fairly painless.

Corentin

17 hours ago, deanishe said:

Nice. Some very cool apps in there. But the best part is Josy's 2004-vintage, dialup-friendly website

 

Josy is old school for sure, but she’s an AMAZING proofreader. Nothing gets past her.

47 minutes ago, deanishe said:

You've translated apps or you've actually managed the localisation of apps?

Both. I’ve also worked on localizations locally (from A to Z on my own Mac, which was a lot easier to do when iLocalize was still around and working) and through online platforms.

I understand very well both the technical and logistical challenges, but there are ways to somewhat ease the pain.

Véro raises some very valid points, but I’d like to add that many non-English speaking users don’t have the same expectations when it comes to localizations: They can’t use the app at all when it’s not in their language, so getting the app with a localized UI is a huge thing for them. They don’t necessarily demand (expect) support to be in their own language.

Many apps worked around the issue by stating (on their site or even in the UI of the app) that support was only provided in English.

As for managing the localizations in different languages, it can indeed be a challenge. It works best if someone on your team understands the languages, or if you can rely on a “lead” volunteer localizer to approve the strings. 1Password was mentioned in previous messages and that’s how they manage it (and I happen to be one of the “approvers” for the French localizations of 1Password.

As far as I am concerned, the biggest challenge for the localizations (especially for an app as popular as Alfred) is not to deal with localizers or their localizations, but to make sure the app itself is structured to be localizable and deal with difference in lengths between languages (Véro should be able to attest to it… French is notoriously longer then English for instance).

Again, I’m not trying to pressure our friends at Alfred in any way or to argue about how hard or easy it might be. I’m just saying: I understand your points, and if you ever want to reconsider and localize the app, I’d be more than happy to provide all the assistance I can 🙂

Corentin

11 hours ago, Alan He said:

1. Alfred is great app

2. crowdin is great website to do i18n

3. I think alfred should consider it , I am very happy to do Chinese translation.

Crowdin, OneSky, Transifex, there is no shortage of collaborative localizations platforms these days.

I've localized a number of apps before and I’d be more than happy to help out fora French localization of Alfred as well.

The question of the localization of Alfred has been raised years and years ago, it’d be nice to see the app finally accessible to non-English speakers too 🙂

Corentin

20 hours ago, Joe O. said:

 

I think I do have a path issue:

 

Any suggestions I how I fix it? Not sure why there are two profiles. I haven't had a corruption in the past few years.

Two options:

1. Remove the unused identity and rename the working one to match the default name.
2. Edit the path in the workflow (by far the easiest) to reflect the custom path that applies on your Mac.

Corentin

And by the way, with the latest version of the script, for a contact the shorthand should have been “olkc Katie” (olkc for contacts, olkm for messages and olke for events).

I've never seen the database file error.

The way the workflow work is by searching through Spotlight for filetypes belonging to Outlook (contacts, messages and events) in the ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook 15 Profiles/Main Profile folder.

It could be:

• Some sort of permission issue (check that the ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook 15 Profiles/Main Profile folder is readable)
• A path issue (lets say, your database had to be renamed because of a corruption, do you have more than one profile folder in ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook 15 Profiles/?)
• A launch service database issue (you need to rebuild the launch service database, a free app like Onyx could do that for you).

Corentin

1 hour ago, cduemmen said:

This works for me @mojave. Thanks for sharing. I didn't manage to get the other workflow running despite following all available Mojave tips...

The workflows leverage Spotlight customized searches which can be used in any apps and are not affected but the new Mojave security restrictions.

Many of the other workflows for Alfred rely on scripts and require that Alfred has special authorization in the Security & Privacy prefpane (Security > Accessibility and Automation).

The problem most of the time is either that the System doesn't notice that the app has been added to Accessibility (but you can uncheck and recheck the app), or that it doesn't prompt you to add it to the Automation section (and then, as to now, you can't do a thing to trigger the warning allowing you to add the app in Automations).

Corentin

I edited the workflow to replace references to Outlook 15 to 2016.

All three triggers are provided in one workflow.

You can find the new one here:

http://www.cortig.net/files/Outlook2016Searches.alfredworkflow.zip

Corentin

On 3/11/2018 at 8:23 AM, az566 said:

Great workflow! 

 

When I search however, the results aren't clickable. Can you update this for Outlook 16?

Outlook 15.x and 16.x work through the same mechanisms. The workflow for Outlook "15" should work just the same in Outlook "16" (both still labeled as Outlook 2016 actually):

http://www.cortig.net/files/Outlook15Workflows.zip

I'm using the workflow myself on my Mac and it's working fine. I can search for messages, contacts, etc, and select the messages in Alfred to see them in Outlook.

What do you mean it's not clickable? What happens when you hit Return on one of the returns in Alfred?

Corentin

On 10/9/2017 at 1:31 PM, deanishe said:

 

Your question isn't very clear. Are you asking how to make Alfred search your Outlook address book, not your Contacts address book?

 

And if that’s the case, the answer is simple: install the workflow offered here and whenever you want to search for Outlook contacts use the trigger to search through the workflow.

55 minutes ago, Dax said:

I would like to use Messages, Contacts and Events workflows with Office 365 /Outlook for Mac/latest version 15.39) on my desktop,  and I have the Powerpack...any chances someone with more abilities than me can achieve this? When I enter 'Email' and 'name' into Alfred, a list of names from the CONTACTS app show up, and while I can click and create an email from OUTLOOK (my default email client), the email address is not correct as my CONTACTS app is not current; how to make OUTLOOK the default? ty.

 

I'm not sure I"m following you. Did you install the workflow for Alfred offered here?

The latest version is at http://www.cortig.net/files/Outlook15Workflows.zip

Corentin

Nice, thanks!!

I had completely forgotten to update the workflows for Outlook 15.

Editing the previous ones is fairly trivial, but in case people don't know the location of the identity in Outlook 15, or the details that need adjustments, I placed updated (Outlook 15 only) workflows in a zip archive here:

http://www.cortig.net/files/Outlook15Workflows.zip

I didn't mean to duplicate your new workflow boutwell. I thought reposting the whole set was still useful since you only provided the workflow for messages, and not contacts and calendar events.

         Corentin

Are there any details in Console.app showing an issue? Could you also try temporarily quitting LittleSnitch?

I tried deleting my message but I was't fast enough :-> It turns out I had not clicked on the Add iOS remote button yet… I was under the false assumption that this was only for local connections from the same LAN and not for direct connections for the WAN.

I clicked it and was able to "pair" the Mac and the remote.

Corentin

 

Hi - is it possible to include a workflow's results in your default/fallback search results?

I'm not sure you can do that with a workflow at all. Though you can change the keyword for the workflow: simply select the workflow in the list of workflow in the Preferences of Alfred, then double-click the File Filter that says olkm. In the Basic Setup you can enter whatever shortcut (e.g.: simply o).

         Corentin

Hi Cortig,

 

this is not changing anything. Just using Spotlight for mails then.

I can't figure out what go be wrong in your case. I simply cannot manage to reproduce the issue.

Are you having simialr issues with other workflows, or just this one?

Have you tried the other Outlook workflows (contacts and events)?

Hi Corentin,

 

this isn't working for me. I'd like to post screenshots but i don't get how to attach some. If i enter olkm it's all fine, even after entering olkm+space, but if i then start typing it wants to search with google.

 

Cheers, 

hubutz

I really tried, but I can't reproduce the problem.

Alfred is not localized at all, so it's one more reason why having the OS in German shouldn't have any impact.

You could easily test this out by using your OS in English for a while.

Even with my System in German, it's working here as intended and I don't remember hearing (reading) that anybody else had the same issue.

Any chance another workflow could be intercepting the shortcut? Another app like TextExpander or Keyboard Maestro maybe?

Have you tried changing the keyword to see whether you still had the issue?

Hi Corentin,

 

I tried to use the search mail workflow but it doesnt work. I can enter "oklm" and it shows up searching mails, but as soon as i enter something more it just tries to search with google. Don't know what I've done wrong. Could that be because I have a german OSX?

The language of the OS shouldn't matter the least.

After the search keyword (oklm here), you should enter a space, then the query itself.

Eg: oklm Corentin

searches Outlook e-mails for Corentin.

It's not as hard as it looks.

Spotlight uses special keywords to restrict the searches.

You could enter all that string straight in Spotlight:

kMDItemUsedDates:2013-06-23 kMDItemAuthors:Mike kMDItemTitle:"Top Score" kind:Olk14_Message

The first keyword has the date of the item, in computer format.

The second one is for the author

The third for the title and the "Kind" restricts the search to Outlook e-mails.

Once you know what keywords to use, you can play with that extensively in Spotlight itself. As I was saying, you introduce too many parameters to make it practical in Alfred itself but it should be easier to use in Spotlight.

I'm using PostBox instead of Outlook. I was wondering what things needed to be changed so this can be adapted (if at all). Is it possible?

I don't use Postbox myself, so I have no idea what the right syntax would be.

You could somehow figure it out using the mils command on a postbox message to see what's exposed to Spotlight though.

Hi. I have just bought Alfred. My main objective was to be abel to search for emails in my Mac Office Outlook files. I downloaded your workflows, thank you. Could you help me a little further please?

 

I would like to type into Alfred a specific email search, e.g. From: Mike, Subject: Top score, Date: 23-06-13, or anyone of these parameters - Is this possible?

For these fields, I know which Spotlight attributes to play with:

I would like to use this with Entourage 2008, any chances someone with more abilities than me can achieve this? 

OK, I started playing with it.

Let me provide some details:

I don't have Entourage on my Mac. I am therefore quite limited for quite a few of the technical aspects, which include: 

- I can't test the workflow. It's a simple search, so it can't do any damage, but I can't even test that it works at all and all the machines I found with Entourage on them weren't recent enough to run Alfred.

- I can't use the corresponding default Entourage file icons, so the workflow I put together for testing doesn't have cusomized icons.

- I had to use ~/Library/Caches/Metadata/Microsoft/Entourage/2008 as the search scope. I didn't want to restrict it any further because I can't guess what name your identity has. In outlook, it's a lot less likely that people will huse alternate names for their identities, but I have seen it in Entourage far more frequently.

That could turn out to be an issue with backed-up or alternate identities. I'm not sure whether they have Spotlight index files there (and obviously I can't test it).

Here's a "preview" of the workflow — only for contacts at this point. If anyone could test it and let me know what works and what doesn't, that'd be great…

It's in a temporary location on my server — not a permanent link: http://www.cortig.net/temp/Entourage2008Contacts.zip

The workkflows can be adapted to Entourage of course.

It requires changing the search scope (the indexable files are somewhere in the Cache I believe. Not sure) and the File Type.

I don't have Entourage on my computer right now and I need to find one around me that has it, but I'll do my best to create new Entourage workflows.

I just downloaded the workflows. I was able to import the Message and Event ones. When I try to import the Contacts one it actually replaces the Messages one. I can see an information text in red in the import window that says it's going to replace the Messages workflow. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

You're not doing anything wrong. It's my fault… I created the workflows one after the other, duplicating the first one and editing for the next one and forgot to update the bundle ID for the Contact workflow 

I just corrected the problem and re-uploaded the workflows on the server. Thanks a lot for the heads up (and I wonder why I didn't get any sort of warning on my own Mac)

If you redownload them from the same link, importing should be fine now.

Sorry about that.

(and BTW, I'm glad people find these workflows useful!)