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Hi all,

Are there ways to make links to other applications such that when I hit F3 in them omnifocus makes a link to that file. I'd be pleased as punch if it were simply a file:///path/to/my/file.txt when I'm in emacs (for instance).

I very often will have an action that is "revise this".

Alternatively, does anyone have an Applescript solution that can be called by the source application (i.e. emacs, or word, etc) by a series of key strokes in that app?

BTW: (in 1.1 at least) a link to an existant file like file:///Users/jklymak/boo.txt attempts to open the finder, but doesn't find the file. In Safari, it at least opens the finder to the file. Optimally, OF would open the file.

Thanks, and sorry if I'm missing something obvious.
 
This would have to be scripted separately for each sending application. The OmniFocus Extras forum includes links to lots of user-provided scripts that you might be able to bend to your will. There is also a thread there to post requests for scripts.

The usual way that OF handles links to files is as rich-text attachments. For example, you can drag a finder item onto a task in OF to create a link to the item. Double-clicking the link icon opens the item.

I experimented with file:// URLs in Safari and OF. The two behave the same up to a point. There are two cases. In Safari, if the link is to a file that Safari can display, like a Word document, then the folder containing the file is opened in Finder and the document is selected. In the case where Safari can display the file, like a pdf or text file, then Safari displays the document. Safari never launches the application that can handle the file as far as I can tell.

OmniFocus works just like Safari for file:// URLs, except that it can't display any documents, so it always shows them in Finder.
__________________
Cheers,

Curt
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by curt.clifton View Post

The usual way that OF handles links to files is as rich-text attachments. For example, you can drag a finder item onto a task in OF to create a link to the item. Double-clicking the link icon opens the item.
Hi Curt,

Thanks, that works great from the Finder!

Is there a way to script these rich-text attachments? I see in the applescript dictionary there is an entry for "rich text" but I am clueless enough about apple scripts to know how to go about invoking this.

Thanks!

EDIT: Ooops - I found a solution here. Seems great. Thanks for the guidance.

Last edited by jklymak; 2008-07-04 at 12:54 PM..
 
I love OmniFocus' attachment implementation and use them all the time. A couple of nice features you can use with attachments:

1) Dragging an attachment into an OmniFocus note field will create a link to the item by default. I believe it is actually an alias, as opposed to a Unix soft link (or at least it functions like an alias). For example, if you attach a linked file to OmniFocus and then later move the file in the Finder, the link is smart enough to continue pointing to the file in the new location.

2) If you Option-drag an attachment to an OmniFocus note, the file will be copied and embedded in your OmniFocus database. This option is also available in the dialog displayed by Edit -> Attach File.

3) If you're on Leopard, attachments can be previewed with Quick Look by selecting the icon in an OmniFocus note and hitting spacebar.

4) Folders can be linked as attachments too (virtually any object in the file system can be linked, including zip archives, disk images, and applications). With the Folder Quick Look plugin, you can even preview the contents of folders. You can find the plugin at http://homepage.mac.com/xdd/software/folder/.

5) Dragging a contact from Address Book into an OmniFocus note field will create a link to that person's vcard.

6) Dragging a web page's favicon (the small icon to the left of the URL in Safari's address field) and dropping in it in an OmniFocus note field will display the title of the page as a link to the URL. If you instead drag just the URL instead of the favicon, OmniFocus will display the URL itself as a link.

Hope this helps.

-Dennis

PS - Curt, can you clarify exactly what "rich-text attachments" are? I mean, is there something in particular about this implementation that makes them "rich-text" in OmniFocus as opposed to just "regular" attachments? I guess one of the reasons I ask is that I've noticed that dragging a file to a standard Mac OS X text view (NSTextView, I think, like that used by TextEdit and some third-party apps like Yojimbo) results in a similar icon but it doesn't respond to double-clicking or Quick Look. In fact, dragging files to TextEdit seems virtually useless. So the implementation in OmniFocus seems greatly improved over the standard behavior. Any insight you have would be greatly appreciated.

Last edited by Toadling; 2008-07-04 at 02:38 PM..
 
Just to follow up - I posted an emacs solution in the "Extras" forum.

The solution I had didn't respond to the double click if I had an extra space in the name. But otherwise it seems to work fine. No idea why Yojimbo etc have issues.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Toadling View Post
Curt, can you clarify exactly what "rich-text attachments" are? I mean, is there something in particular about this implementation that makes them "rich-text" in OmniFocus as opposed to just "regular" attachments? I guess one of the reasons I ask is that I've noticed that dragging a file to a standard Mac OS X text view (NSTextView, I think, like that used by TextEdit and some third-party apps like Yojimbo) results in a similar icon but it doesn't respond to double-clicking or Quick Look. In fact, dragging files to TextEdit seems virtually useless. So the implementation in OmniFocus seems greatly improved over the standard behavior. Any insight you have would be greatly appreciated.
I'm afraid I don't have much to add. I said "rich-text attachment" to contrast OF attachments from just embedding the URL as text like jklymak was initially trying.

Here's an interesting experiment though: Drag a text file from Finder onto a note in OF, creating a clickable attachment. Then edit the note, copy the contents, and paste it into a new TextEdit document. On my machine the TextEdit document has a clickable text link to the original file. But if I drag the same file onto the TextEdit window, clicking the resulting icon just gives me an error.

So, it looks to me like OF is handling the drop action differently than TextEdit, and is also rendering the rich-text note differently. Maybe Ken or Tim will chime in with a technical description for the coding geeks in the audience. (In all their free time between working on the OF 1.1 release.;-)
__________________
Cheers,

Curt
 
 


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