Simplicity Is Bliss

Similar to my post yesterday on Accessing Project Support Material Folders from Things with AppleScript, the script featured in this post helps you to open or create and open a document with your project notes. Although Things supports notes on a project and task level, you may find it useful to have a separate document with more extensive notes at your finger tips when working inside of Things.

Functionality of the Script

The script does include some elements from the Project Support Material Folders script mentioned above and basically first checks if there is a project folder (if not you'll be asked if you want to create one) and if there is already a notes document in that folder. If there isn't you are asked whether you'd like to create one. I have created two versions of the script: One more generic one where you can choose the text editor of choice and one which is more specific to OmniOutliner Professional since it allows you to chose the OmniOutliner template on which you'd like new project notes documents to be based on.

As with the project folders script, you can invoke this script when you have selected a task that belongs to a Things project in the Things UI (independent tasks or tasks that belong to an Area of Responsibility or Person only will be omitted).

Installation and Configuration

• Download the AppleScript (Generic Version, OmniOutliner Pro Version)
• Put it into your user script directory, e.g. ~/Users/<your username>/Library/Scripts/
• Modify the key parameters in the script as required
• Configure your preferred way for running the script

Here are the parameters you can change to make the script working for your environment:

• set projectsFolderName to "Support Material" – Change this into the folder name in which you keep all your project’s support material folders
• set projectsPath to (path to documents folder as text) – This points to your standard “Documents” folder by default, if you use a different folder or a folder further down in the hierarchy , you can set it to a string with the folder path, e.g. “Macintosh HD:Users:Sven:Documents:Misc:Projects:”. It needs to end with a colon.
• set fileExtension to ".oo3" - The file extension your project note documents should have, e.g. ".oo3" for OmniOutliner or ".txt" for TextEdit
• set thePrefix to "_" - If you like to use a prefix to the filename in order to make it display on top of the folder's content list, e.g. "_", set it here. If you do not want a prefix please use "" (no space between the quotes).
• set theSuffix to " Project Notes" - The filename of the project notes will be prefix plus project name in Things plus suffix, the later is what you can set here. Starting with a space is recommended for better readability.

The following parameter is only applicable to the OmniOutliner Pro version of the script:

• set theTemplateName to "Project Charter" - This allows you to set the OmniOutliner template to base the document on. The name needs to exactly match the name of the template in OmniOutliner. It can also be "Default", if you have modified the default template or simply like to use it.

Changing the text editor To change the text editor in the generic version of the script from OmniOutliner Professional to your preferred one you need to find two (2!) lines of code in the script saying tell application "OmniOutliner Professional" and change them to the application name of your text editor, e.g. "TextEdit".

Running the Script

There are at least three different ways to invoke the script when working in Things. Unfortunately Things does not allow to e.g. add scripts to menu or tool bars, so we need to work around this with one of the following options:

1. Use the Mac OS X Script menu which can be configured using the AppleScript Utility. It displays a menu bar item from which you can invoke scripts and with the Keyboard Setting in the Mac OS X System Preferences you can even assigned a keyboard short-cut for each script. The Things Wiki has a great description on how to get this working.
2. Using Red Sweater's FastScripts does about the same thing, but with much more comfort since you can, for example, assign keyboard short-cuts to each script right from within FastScripts. It is pretty much the AppleScript Utility on steroids.
3. Last option is to use an "Application Launcher" such as QuickSilver or Launchbar. You can simply call them using a distinct keyboard shortcut and type the name of the script or an abbreviation you have configured for it and run it.

The script is based on the work done by Jim Harrison for similar functionality in OmniFocus or TaskPaper, but I have modified and simplified the scripting significantly and made it work for Things. Let me know if the script works for you and if not which problems you encounter.

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