Workflows: hotkeys linked to keyword inputs?

[untidey]

I'm curious if there's a use case people see for currently being able to link hotkeys to keyword inputs in a workflow? At present, the handling seems a bit random. I know Andrew is still expecting workflows to evolve, I'm just trying to get my head around various possibilities as we go.

 

On one level hotkeys seem like just another input. But being able to link them to multiple keyword inputs might provide a nice facility to use hotkeys to bring up a list of the keywords to which they are linked. For example, imagine the following, reasonably contrived scenario:

 

 

If we could link the hotkey to all three keyword inputs, then pressing the hotkey could bring up a results list containing the three items:

 

Toggle Hide

Show Library

Empty Trash

 

one of which you select to process.

 

 

 

[CarlosNZ]

You could do this quite easily by having the hotkey launch a Script Filter, which just generates the list of options before passing the selection on to a "Run Script" action.

[untidey]

I know what you're saying I think and for this simple example that would work fine, but for anything more complex you'd lose access to all of Alfred's GUI goodness and power such as the different output options on each branch, modifier branches, etc. That's a lot of functionality to try and replicate, if it were even possible.

 

I guess the real point I'm trying to make is that linking hotkeys to keywords seems fairly pointless at the moment and this is a suggestion of what might make it more useful.

 

One thing the link currently allows you to do is pass the clipboard contents or selected text through to the keyword. I think keywords should just have 'selected text', 'clipboard' (and a new option 'selected finder files') as argument options directly anyway.

 

Given the way Alfred currently renders the hotkey with argument to keyword link (which looks quite strange), it seems that this particular part of workflows is something Andrew's yet to look at. All the more reason to discuss possibilities before any work is done on it.

[Andrew]

This is deffo food for thought - there are probably quite a few usability issues to think through but in concept, I think something like this could work.

 

I'm a bit rammed with v2 stuff at the moment so it might be good to revive this thread once v2 has been generally released and I can think about it with a bit more of an open mind!

 

Cheers,

Andrew

[untidey]

Cheers mate. Figured you'd be swamped at the moment. Once the dust has settled I'll post afresh.