Anyone used Automator?

On or about 11/19/07 9:43 AM, thus spake "David Weintraub"
<davidweintraub.name>:

> I've had similar frustrations with Automator in other cases too where
> I'd start setting up a particular workflow, but at the very end, some
> critical step was missing.

It is possible (and usually necessary) to supplement the existing actions
with a Run AppleScript action that performs a missing step.

m.

At 3:32 AM -0800 11/20/07, Matt Neuburg wrote:
>On or about 11/19/07 9:43 AM, thus spake "David Weintraub"
><davidweintraub.name>:
>
>> I've had similar frustrations with Automator in other cases too where
>> I'd start setting up a particular workflow, but at the very end, some
>> critical step was missing.
>
>It is possible (and usually necessary) to supplement the existing actions
>with a Run AppleScript action that performs a missing step.

And you can use the other side of OS X as well. I've had reasonable
success integrating shell scripts into Automator. Generally its
simple stuff to screen scrape selective Craigslist ads and the like,
but never having learned Applescript I'm comfy on the /bin/sh side of
things.

~Nick
http://www.inmff.net

On Nov 21, 2007, at 7:35 PM, Nicholas Barnard wrote:

>> It is possible (and usually necessary) to supplement the existing
>> actions
>> with a Run AppleScript action that performs a missing step.
>
> And you can use the other side of OS X as well. I've had reasonable
> success integrating shell scripts into Automator. Generally its
> simple stuff to screen scrape selective Craigslist ads and the like,
> but never having learned Applescript I'm comfy on the /bin/sh side
> of things.

I am extremely comfortable with Bourne Shell. I've been writing Bourne
Shell scripts for almost 2 decades now, and I've setup a few chronjobs
that use various shell scripts and Perl scripts. Unfortunately, what I
want to do is create an action to find all the read and unflagged
emails in my inbox and move them to a folder called "Archive". I could
probably do something like this in Bourne Shell since each email is an
individual file, but I am worried about the side effects on the Mail
database.

In fact, I was thinking of using the Finder's actions in the automator
to do this, but I again worried about the damage it might cause with
the Mail database being out of sync with the messages.

Maybe it's time to pick up a little AppleScript. I use to know
Hypercard's scripting language, and I bet it isn't all that different.

David Weintraub

am 24.11.2007 11:15 Uhr schrieb tidbits-talktidbits.com unter
tidbits-talktidbits.com:


>> It is possible (and usually necessary) to supplement the existing
>> actions
>> with a Run AppleScript action that performs a missing step.
>
> And you can use the other side of OS X as well. I've had reasonable
> success integrating shell scripts into Automator.

Hm, as I understood it, Automator oughta simplify things - not complicate
them.

Automator as it is, is just useless. I tried to have Automator open Safari,
select a web-site, log me in and download a pdf-file. (PDF-version of my
daily newspaper...)

I found that this is a task Automator can't handle.

But where is the simplicity when I have to learn Unix Shell scripting or
AppleScript to have Automator do something useful???

Regards,

Udo

--On November 24, 2007 4:21:07 AM -0800 Udo Huth <u.hutht-online.de> wrote:
> Automator as it is, is just useless. I tried to have Automator open
> Safari, select a web-site, log me in and download a pdf-file.
> (PDF-version of my daily newspaper...)
>
> I found that this is a task Automator can't handle.

Did you try recording an automator script or writing one of your own? I
just recorded an automator option to open safari, go to gmail.com, log me
in to gmail, and click one of my tags/mailboxes. Seems like it should be
tweakable pretty easy to do what you want.

I did have to edit the script a few times to get it to work properly, some
items I ran into:

* The dock had to be visible on screen for it to click Safari (I have an
auto-hide dock). Best work around for this is to open Safari with a direct
action instead of a recorded action.

* First run through I got the dialog to allow safari to access the gmail
password i have stored in keychain (I use Camino instead of Safari so
Safari isn't already allowed to get my passwords). 2nd time through the
script failed waiting for this dialog. Deleting this step allowed the
script to proceed on the next pass throughs.

* clicks on page links are recorded by the text you see. My initial script
was an attempt to open the Spam box and delete some spam, but gmail shows
the spam link as Spam (XXX) where xxx is the number of items tagged spam.
I didn't dig around to figure out a fix for this issue, I changed the
script to click a link that has static text.

If the link to your PDF is static each day this should be a fairly easy
recordable action. Someone else may be aware of away around scripting for
a dynamic link text.

am 26.11.2007 11:08 Uhr schrieb tidbits-talktidbits.com unter
tidbits-talktidbits.com:

> Did you try recording an automator script or writing one of your own? I
> just recorded an automator option to open safari, go to gmail.com, log me
> in to gmail, and click one of my tags/mailboxes. Seems like it should be
> tweakable pretty easy to do what you want.

How do you RECORD a script with Automator????? With Automator 1.04 of Mac OS
10.4.10 there is no menu entry "Recording" or anything like that. When I
enter "Recording" in Automator Help I only get the response "No fitting
answer found"...

So what does Apple hide in the German version of Automator???

Regards,

Udo

On Nov 28, 2007, at 9:33 AM, Udo Huth wrote:

> How do you RECORD a script with Automator????? With Automator 1.04
> of Mac OS
> 10.4.10 there is no menu entry "Recording" or anything like that.
> When I
> enter "Recording" in Automator Help I only get the response "No
> fitting
> answer found"...
>
> So what does Apple hide in the German version of Automator???

Recording in Automator is new in Leopard. In Leopard's Automator,
there is a Record command in the Workflow menu (however that
translates).

   --John

On 11/28/07, Udo Huth <u.hutht-online.de> wrote:
>
> How do you RECORD a script with Automator????? With Automator 1.04 of Mac OS
> 10.4.10 there is no menu entry "Recording" or anything like that. When I
> enter "Recording" in Automator Help I only get the response "No fitting
> answer found"...

Recording was added in 10.5.