Exploring AquaMinds NoteTaker

Confessions of a Utilities Slut:All Hail BlogAssist, King of Workarounds

I'm not a proud man--I freely admit that I'm a slut for utilities that are beautifully crafted, laser-focused one-trick-ponies. The guilty secret of my childless condition is that I gave away my first-, second- and third-born for mission-critical applets like FastScripts, MenuCalendarClock and DragThing.

NoteTaker's integration with Ecto2 and MarsEdit currently does not support on-the-fly HTML conversion of text formatting. In earlier posts, I managed to create multi-component workaround by using Tagging Service in combination with iPaste. It was admittedly kludgy, but it sure beat hand-tagging all the text formatting and hyperlinks. The constituent apps in this solution are excellent and I plan to keep using them as they were originally intended. However, I've been seduced by a more elegant solution to HTML conversion when handing off entries NoteTaker entries to Ecto2 or MarsEdit: All hail Dejal's amazing freeware, BlogAssist.

Very Personal To My Dim "Friend:" The Easy Way To Create Links in Entries and Posts

While we wait for the American visitors to recover from fireworks smoke inhalation, the unpleasant aftermath of the dodgy potato salad left too long in the sun and the startling revelation that Barry Bostwick--who played a politician on Spin City and also starred in The Rocky Horror Picture Show--looked more naturally at home in the midst of the patriotic hullabaloo than, well, everybody who's running for president this year, here's a simple but very effective tip regarding entry and blog links.

(Note: For those of you still in school and bitterly complaining about studying William Faulkner, applied analysis of his works will one day enable you to write monster sentences like the lead of this posting. I assume that's glee you're trying to contain.)

The current challenge of blogging with NoteTaker is that it's not yet WYSIWYG--to which I advise patience; who knows what lurks around the corner. In the meantime, however, using Tagging Service as a helper app allows you to easily insert HTML tags with keyboard short cuts. So far, so good. But an additional stumbling block occurs when pasting a URL into a Tagging Service-created link--that is, if you dimly persist in using Safari (or other default browser) to laboriously copy and then paste into the link tag. (Someone very, very close to me was actually doing this for a longer period of time than he will admit to before, well, his brain engaged--but identifying me him will would only cause embarrassment.

Tired of Punctuationless Heads? Try This Ungrammatical Work-Around!

While off the air, I amused myself with massaging the various technologies this blog obsesses about. The results will be popping up in the future. Call them tiplets, if you will; the the tapas of postings--small-plate strategies which can add up to a workflow feast.

If you've been here before, you know that the NoteTaker/Ecto AppleScript uses the first sentence of the entry as the headline of the posting. There is an important proviso: To be transformed into a headline, the first sentence must end in a period: it serves a trigger for all of the headline-making machinations happening below the surface. And, after the first sentence has been made into a headline, the period is dropped, the making the head, well, more head-like.

What I've described is a Good Thing: It allows both NoteTaker entries and the blog postings which they create to share headlines. But, because no system is perfect, it may seem to prevent the use of headlines which end in other kinds of punctuation--and in truth--I also had resigned myself to sedate, non-gonzo heads. At least until I started messing around with the process.

I occurred to me that because the headline-making part of the script it truly fixated on that first period--and because, afterward, that period is dropped--what would happen if it put a period after a terminal exclamation point or question mark in the first sentence? What happens is that it works! While looking slightly odd in the head of the notebook entry, it gives you the flexibility to end your headlines in some other than an implied period.

What's Direct-To-Blog and What's Not (Part Two)

The gratifying number of visitors to this site in its first the three weeks is forcing me to grapple with asethetic/communications issues that will affect its proof-of-concept status. Thus, as my own niggling perfectionism occasionally outpaces the current performance of the NoteTaker/Ecto script, I'll let you know. It's not so much, "Don't try this at home" as it is something along the lines of "Here's how to further tart-up your blog."

In the first installment of this random series of Tell-All, I pointed out that I post everything on this site as direct-to-blog, using the NoteTaker/Ecto AppleScript. And a good thing too: If I breathlessly encouraged you to use the script and yet created this blog in another way, you would be right in acting like angry villagers in a Frankenstein film. So, yes: All posts to this site are first written a entries in a dedicated NoteTaker notebook, the structure of which has been discussed earlier. And using the additional helper applications I've also described, all of the text formatting and links are also created within the NT notebook entry--but as HTML tags.

(NoteTaker does feature WYSIWYG text formatting and HTML conversion, but--currently--only for its highly useful Web notebooks. It also has an elegant link maker that works within notebooks, between notebooks and also functions in Web notebooks--but, again, currently not when sending to copy to Ecto.)

How the Pieces Fit Together: A Visual Review

We've recently covered a lot of ground that has much to do with stitching together meta-applications from the parts of separate ones. Perhaps this is why I've been stifling the urge to scream It's Alive! It's Alive! each time I launch NoteTaker and NoteTaker launches Ecto. The story of my life: I set out to be Cary Grant but somehow became Colin Clive . . . Enough of my paltry problems.

Below is a chart that quickly and efficiently reprises the past few postings. Think of it as Page 2 of the virtual handout that started here. As always, double-clicking (© Microsoft) on the art, opens a larger, more legible version. Depending on your on the speed of your connection, this will happen instantly--or you may have time to begin a book. (I recommend Stranger Than Fiction, Chuck Palahniuk's new collection of essays.)

I'm wondering if a future improvement to these charts--yup, I go back and change things on this blog with impunity--may be to create image maps from the illustrations--but I need to workout the implications of TypePad creating thumbnails of them. Would the links work in miniature, like some sort of Barbie Dream House webpage? So many loopy ideas, so little time.

Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:01:32 PM

A Closer Look at Tagging Service

Yesterday I pointed out that Tagging Service by MonkeyFood provided fast, fast, fast relief for any one flirting with text-tagging-induced repetitive stress injury. Since then, I've had a chance to more fully explore this nifty little applet and I'm pleased to inform users who respond to angle brackets the same way Dracula responds to crucifixes that my new best friend, Tagging Service, also handles the creation of links that convey without a hitch to Ecto and TypePad. TS (yes, our bond is now so strong, I'm on nickname basis with the utility) additionally allows the timesaving creation of image addresses (img) and URL identification (url).

TS works its magic by inserting open and close tags based upon a single-letter trigger that is followed by a colon. This letter-colon trigger is placed directed next to the first word that the tag is to act upon--with no space between the letter-colon and the word. (Explained in prose, the process looks more complicated than it is. It's best to simply download the freeware service and play with it. Complete mastery takes about 30 seconds--I promise.)

Text Formatting Tip: An HTML Tagging Service

The current version of the NoteTaker/Ecto AppleScript does not send the text formatting of NT notebook entries to Ecto. But sterling application that it is, Ecto quite happily reads HTML tags. So here's a very cool work-around:

Go to MonkeyFood. com and download their mind-bendingly useful Tagging Service. (It's freeware, so please, while you're there, drop them a heartfelt thank-you note.) Install Tagging Service in Library>Services and restart your computer. After that, you'll find a Tag Text option in the Services menu--an option that works perfectly with NoteTaker. And--best of all--Tagging Service can be invoked with a keyboard shortcut: Cmd-Shift-\ (note: it's a backslash!).

Now, as you're writing a blog-bound NT notebook entry, simply indicate where you want italics to start by typing i: for italic, b: for bold, etc (all of the triggers are listed in the Tagging Service documentation).Don't put a space between the the colon and the word where the formatting should start. Then simply select the word or phrase or paragraph, trigger included, and press Cmd-Shift-\ Voila! Instant text formatting tags that import into Ecto. The text formatting of this entry was generated by MonkeyFood's great little service. You gotta love small developers!

PS: This system enhancement works with any word processor that supports services. The one proviso is that the keyboard shortcut may already be used by the app and therefore will be unavailable. While the shortcut is modifiable, the default setting works perfectly with NoteTaker, so don't get too ambitious.

Wednesday, June 9, 2004 11:14:23 AM