Tag as you import (a la Y*jimbo)?

Hi,

I didn’t see this answered though I suspect it has been.

Is there a way to tag files as they are captured with the F1 key?

For example, Yojimbo allows one to assign tags (via a dialogue box) when capturing a web archive from a browser, my most common import action, instead of locating the file in the database afterwards and adding tags.

Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere.

thanks

Louis

Not currently, but I’m working on it. You can, however, drag and drop onto a tag source to import a file/URL and assign that tag.

Thanks for the tip.

:slight_smile:

I was just about to add this request. Yay!

Something like Shift-F1…

And call me a nut, but something prettier than a regular modal style box would be really nice. But function first!

Thanks!

In the meantime, you can customize the capture script(s) for application(s) you need this for:


set the_tag_string to text returned of (display dialog "List tags" buttons {"OK"} default button "OK" default answer "")

...

return {{|url|:theURL, |tagsString|:the_tag_string}}

I am very interested in this feature too. Not to push, Michael, but would you be willing to say if this is on a front burner or a back burner? Thanks. I’ve been testing Yojimbo, DevonThink, etc. and I prefer EF except for the feature that Yojimbo has on being able to tag at the same time as you quickly capture (a web page, in my case).

Just for reference, I’m cross linking here to the same requests in different threads: http://c-command.com/forums/showthread.php?t=350&highlight=yojimbo and http://c-command.com/forums/showthread.php?t=101&highlight=yojimbo .

Thanks, and a shout out to you for the awesome email support this weekend.

It’s my top priority for the next feature update.

Did our oft-requested tag feature make it into this update (perhaps I missed it)?

thanks

No—1.2.4 is just a maintenance update.

EagleFiler 1.3 includes a new Capture With Options key, which lets you set various metadata when importing.

Very sweet.

Is it (or will it be) possible to get to the Capture With Option dialog via applescript? I would love to do something like:


tell application "EagleFiler"
     import files {POSIX file "/Users/mjt/Desktop/MyFile"} with options
     import URLs {"http://www.apple.com", "http://c-command.com"} with options
end tell

Or even better:


tell application "EagleFiler"
     import files {POSIX file "/Users/mjt/Desktop/MyFile"} with options default tags {"tag1", "tag2"} default label "Red"
     import URLs {"http://www.apple.com", "http://c-command.com"} with options default title "My Title" default note "My notes"
end tell

It would sure save a lot of coding if you want your applescript to ask for tags, notes, etc. anyway.

I had not been planning to do that, since my thought was that people would use the “import” script command for fully-automated imports and press the capture key for interactive imports. You seem to be imagining a hybrid situation—could you describe a bit more about what you’re trying to do?

Well, a few things.

First, there do remain a few applications that are not currently supported by the capture key. (But wait, if you write a custom capture script, will it run/work if you invoke Capture With Options? If so, are the |tags|, |sourceURL|, etc. applied before or after the Capture With Options dialog? I haven’t tried yet.)

Second, If you capture text or an image from within a document via the EagleFiler:Import service menu item, then there is (currently) no way to tag, annotate, etc. during the import (the same situation that existed with F1 capture before this new feature).

And finally, I have a script that imports emails as text (yes, I know, but I have my reasons). The script asks for the library and tags during import, but it would be nice to also get notes, label, a title, etc. without having to throw up a dozen dialogs.

Well, if you can script it to use the “import” verb, you should be able to script it to write a capture script.

Yes.

Whatever you enter in the dialog overrides the information from the capture script. But, for example, you can leave the Title field in the dialog blank, and then it will fall back on the |title| in the capture script (if present) or else inspect the file itself.

That’s a true statement, but I don’t see how the system service relates to AppleScript and your feature request.

OK, so this is a situation where the application has a capture script, but you prefer not to use it? One option would be to override the built-in capture script by writing your own and putting it in ~/Library/Application Support/EagleFiler/Capture Scripts. If you need more control than that, then I agree that some kind of “ask for options” argument for the “import” verb would be needed.

Ok, so apparently I confused myself. I really wanted the option to chose a library at the time of import, so I wrote several scripts that did just that. I used them like capture scripts, but they were actually regular scripts (using the “import” verb). Furthermore, I assigned them a the keystroke option-F1 in Quicksilver. So when I tried to use the new Capture With Options feature, it appeared to not work with custom capture scripts because I did not have any actual capture scripts at all, but my regular scripts ran instead. Sorry for the confusion.

The only relation is that applescript hooks would allow one to write a script that had the same functionality of the service menu item with the addition of the capture options dialog.

Yes. I’ll just need to adjust my import-email-as-text script to actually be a custom capture script, which I couldn’t do before because the library-selection code did not work within a capture script. The new feature makes that part unnecessary.

It would be simpler, however, if capture scripts accepted |text| and/or |plain text| keys in addition to |path| and |URL| keys – just like one can do “import text” and “import plain text” in addition to “import files” and “import URLs”. It would just save having to write all those temporary files.

I don’t think so, because as far as I know the service menu functionality (e.g. getting the selected rich text of the frontmost window) is not available to AppleScript.

AppleScript’s rich text support isn’t great, so I don’t know if |text| could work. There is an undocumented (still somewhat experimental) |data| key that takes a string and generates a plain text (UTF-8) file for you.

EagleFiler 1.5 adds a parameter to show the options dialog when importing via AppleScript.