How to make 'Large Type', smaller, and change the size / location?

[rootscript]

I love the idea of outputting to 'Large Type' rather than to 'Growl' or 'Notification Center'.

Looking at workflow outputs, there is an option to output to 'Large Type', which fills the screen with whatever text you specify.

 

How do I specify the maximum size font used for this?

or is there a way to choose where this Large Type appears, and how large the area is?

 

I am looking to output text & results to a nice 'Little Box' with text that is a little more sensibly sized.

 

Thanks.

 

 

[jdfwarrior]

I love the idea of outputting to 'Large Type' rather than to 'Growl' or 'Notification Center'.

Looking at workflow outputs, there is an option to output to 'Large Type', which fills the screen with whatever text you specify.

 

How do I specify the maximum size font used for this?

or is there a way to choose where this Large Type appears, and how large the area is?

 

I am looking to output text & results to a nice 'Little Box' with text that is a little more sensibly sized.

 

Thanks.

 

There really isn't a way to custom the large type feature. Perhaps you could use Growl for managing something like this. Some Growl themes have a max height set so it would truncate the data but a lot of them don't. 

[rootscript]

@David Ferguson

When I saw the 'Large Type' option in Alfred, I thought GREAT, an area I can output  results to, but as discussed above found there is no way to customise it.

 

Maybe an alternative could be outputting to something like 'GeekTool.app'.  So we could create a Geeklet where ever we want on the desktop, and have complete control over its position, size, fonts, etc...

 

What do you think?

 

Obviously it would be easier if there was a customisable Notification area built into Alfred; When I saw the 'Large Type' option I thought like that looked liked the start of something that could be really useful.

Edited March 22, 2013 by rootscript

[rootscript]

ok so a test workflow

keyword:

logg

Terminal Command:

echo -n '{query}' > ~/Desktop/log.txt

 

and in GeekTool.app create a geeklet that displays the contents of log.txt on the desktop.

 

alfred 'logg testwords'

 

This WORKS as a proof of concept.

Only issue is there doesn't seem to be a 'Terminal Command' silent mode in Alfred anymore ??

Edited March 22, 2013 by rootscript

[Tyler Eich]

ok so a test workflow

keyword:

logg

Terminal Command:

echo -n '{query}' > ~/Desktop/log.txt

 

and in GeekTool.app create a geeklet that displays the contents of log.txt on the desktop.

 

alfred 'logg testwords'

 

This WORKS as a proof of concept.

Only issue is there doesn't seem to be a 'Terminal Command' silent mode in Alfred anymore ??

Try 'Actions > Run Script'

[rootscript]

Try 'Actions > Run Script'

@Tyler Eich

Thank you, that works (silently)

[rootscript]

There really isn't a way to custom the large type feature. Perhaps you could use Growl for managing something like this. Some Growl themes have a max height set so it would truncate the data but a lot of them don't. 

@David Ferguson | @Andrew

All I managed to find was 'Alfred Preferences Defaults.plist'

 

    <key>appearance.largetype</key>

    <dict>

       <key>autohide</key>

        <false/>

        <key>style</key>

        <integer>1</integer>

    </dict>

 

It would be really cool, if we could change the position, font, and colours; just like we can for the rest of the Alfred Theme.

If it isn't too much trouble, could you expose the settings to us?

[CarlosNZ]

Yeah, I'd use the Large Type feature for workflow output a lot more if we could control the styling of it. How much of a big deal would it be to get it to support HTML/CSS?

[Andrew]

Yeah, I'd use the Large Type feature for workflow output a lot more if we could control the styling of it. How much of a big deal would it be to get it to support HTML/CSS?

 

While it may not be a big deal, if Alfred's core app were to use WebKit, you would see his memory usage balloon to similar to what you see Safari using, and this is miles from ideal for an app which doesn't get quit. The Large Type feature is not going to change, but in the future, there may be other ways to output from workflows instead

[rootscript]

@Andrew, How does Alfred style its Themes then, is that completely different to Large Type; could a 'new' Large Type be created in the same way as Alfred Themes (i have no need to add WebKit, if it already isn't being used).

 

All I'm really suggesting is another popup box (like Alfreds) built the same way, that can display an output like 'Large Type' and 'Post Notification can'.

[rootscript]

@CarlosNZ

Here is an old xcode project I found that has a little cocoa framework example called:

HUDWindow.app (I don't think it uses webkit)

 

hudwindow.tgz

 

@Andrew

I appreciate that you guys must be busy with a million different requests.  Maybe there is someone (with a little xcode experience) who would be willing to create a little osx app from the supplied code (like the example HUDWindow.app) that will read an output from Alfred and just display it.

 

Anybody willing to help out?

[Tyler Eich]

@CarlosNZ

Here is an old xcode project I found that has a little cocoa framework example called:

HUDWindow.app (I don't think it uses webkit)

 

hudwindow.tgz

 

@Andrew

I appreciate that you guys must be busy with a million different requests.  Maybe there is someone (with a little xcode experience) who would be willing to create a little osx app from the supplied code (like the example HUDWindow.app) that will read an output from Alfred and just display it.

 

Anybody willing to help out?

I think Growl is the best solution for now

[jdfwarrior]

I think Growl is the best solution for now

 

I agree. Some Growl themes will have a maximum height set on the popup window but many do not. I've used it in the past to display data that fill the entire height of the screen.

[rootscript]

@David Ferguson & @Tyler Eich - Thanks for your suggestions.

 

I agree. Some Growl themes will have a maximum height set on the popup window but many do not. I've used it in the past to display data that fill the entire height of the screen.

 

David, This sounds very useful for big/long notifications.  Can you post an example workflow, with a explanation, please?

Edited March 24, 2013 by rootscript

[rootscript]

You guys will probably like this:

In terminal try installing 'terminal-notifier':

sudo gem install terminal-notifier

 

Then try sending a notification like this:

terminal-notifier -message "Test message goes here" -title "Test Title" -subtitle "My nice subtitle"

 

 

I think this is a VERY useful addition (for small notifications), that we can use in our workflows.

Edited March 24, 2013 by rootscript

[CarlosNZ]

You guys will probably like this:

In terminal try installing 'terminal-notifier':

sudo gem install terminal-notifier

 

Then try sending a notification like this:

terminal-notifier -message "Test message goes here" -title "Test Title" -subtitle "My nice subtitle"

 

 

I think this is a VERY useful addition (for small notifications), that we can use in our workflows.

Yeah, I've used DDMountainNotifier for a similar effect.

[jdfwarrior]

You guys will probably like this:

In terminal try installing 'terminal-notifier':

sudo gem install terminal-notifier

 

Then try sending a notification like this:

terminal-notifier -message "Test message goes here" -title "Test Title" -subtitle "My nice subtitle"

 

 

I think this is a VERY useful addition (for small notifications), that we can use in our workflows.

 

As you can see from Carlos's post, there are several things like this, Growl even has it's on terminal based utility for creating notifications in it.

[rice.shawn]

Another suggestion would be coming from LeChuck (Post: http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/1325-displaying-a-text-file-or-a-md-file/#entry6462) that abuses a debug mode of the quicklook feature. (Documentation: http://developer.app...qlmanage.1.html).

 

Theoretically, you could just have the workflow write a quick file (maybe .md), put it in temporary storage, and then launch the quicklookd. It makes it so that Finder isn't active but quicklook is.

[rootscript]

@rice.shawn  Thank you, this opens up a lot of possibilities (I replied in the other thread, but posting an example here to maintain some clarity)

 

Action > Run Script

zsh escaping everything

 

# this will output your query & display it as rendered html

 

echo -n '{query}' > ~/index.html && cd ~ && qlmanage -p index.html
 

 

#this will display it as syntax highlighted code instead (as long as you have QLColorCode.qlgenerator)

 

qlmanage -p index.html -c .html -g /Users/rootscript/Library/QuickLook/QLColorCode.qlgenerator
 

 

This thread is turning out to be a lot of {query} output fun

Edited March 26, 2013 by rootscript

[rootscript]

Another alternative using your suggested .md file:

 

/Applications/Mou.app/Contents/MacOS/Mou Math.md &
 

This shows the markdown & the rendered output!  I guess this thread is developing into a list of terminal entry viewers, that we can access with Alfred.

Edited March 26, 2013 by rootscript

[rice.shawn]

Cool. I didn't know about Mou, and I'm glad it's free. For anyone else looking at this thread, here's a link to the app: http://mouapp.com/. And it looks useful, something that I might have to install.

 

Without installing another program, it seems best then to use native HTML.

 

Otherwise, you could just install a md quicklook plugin. Here's one: https://github.com/toland/qlmarkdown/. The binary download is here: https://github.com/downloads/toland/qlmarkdown/QLMarkdown-1.3.zip

 

To install a quicklook plugin, just down the *.qlgenerator into /Library/QuickLook or ~/Library/QuickLook and then type qlmanage -r into a terminal.