A Cool Workflow Idea

[boddicker]

I think this is a cool idea. Essentially, it would be like an Alfred version of Drafts for iOS. You would type a phrase into alfred and then have the option to "Send Text To", and once you select that, you you could select where to send the text to. For example, you could send the text to OmniFocus as a task, or to nvALT as a new text file (ideally, this application list would be customizable). This way you can focus on the text you want to capture instead of needing to recall a specific keyword for the app that you want to trigger. 

[jdfwarrior]

I think this is a cool idea. Essentially, it would be like an Alfred version of Drafts for iOS. You would type a phrase into alfred and then have the option to "Send Text To", and once you select that, you you could select where to send the text to. For example, you could send the text to OmniFocus as a task, or to nvALT as a new text file (ideally, this application list would be customizable). This way you can focus on the text you want to capture instead of needing to recall a specific keyword for the app that you want to trigger. 

 

For this you would still need to enter a keyword for it to action the workflow. So, for instance, you would type 'send <your text here>' and that could use a script filter to provide you with the list of applications to send it to. We would need to think of a way to install support for additional applications though. Otherwise it would just come with whatever was bundled with or supported by the workflow.

[vitor]

I find this to be not much in line with the way Alfred works. Drafts, working with url‐schemes, needs all the data before it does anything with it, at which point it’ll be delegated to another app. Alfred, on the other hand, can delegate the data, but it can also do stuff with it on its own (Script Filters, for example). What this means is that while Drafts works with data after you’ve typed (and actioned) it, Alfred can start working with it right away, even before you finish typing it.

 

There’s also another fundamental difference between the two apps — for Drafts you usually build a lot of very small tasks that are mainly personal, while with Alfred you many times implement a lot of features in a single workflow, and share that. Adding support for various apps (and everything you can do with them) correctly in this manner would take a lot of effort — you’d have to implement so many apps that most people wouldn’t use most of them, which would clutter the options, or you’d have to somehow detect which apps are installed and present only those, which would make it (potentially noticeably) slower.

 

Alfred is simply not implemented that way. Not to say it can’t be done, but it seems like it’d be more trouble than it’s worth.

 

There are two easy solutions for what you ask. If the apps you want to use this with support url‐schemes, you can add them as custom searches, and do pretty much what you do with Drafts, or you can manually edit the workflows you want this to work with to have the same keyword — this way when you type “send” (or whatever you pick), it’d show all the relevant options.

Edited May 7, 2013 by Vítor