I mentioned Todoflow, a python module for working with Taskpaper files, back when I first started using the system full time. It has a lot of the core query support of TaskPaper right from Python.
Now, the same module is available through an Editorial workflow. The workflow automatically installs the module if needed and supports advanced queries and result folding. It adds some minor enhancements to the TaskPaper query syntax (like a “today” term) but does not support parenthetical (nested) expressions.
Editorial for iOS is great without much additional work. Slide your finger on the extra keyboard row to move the cursor. Tap the document title to do a word search with highlighting. Preview Markdown simply by swiping to the preview window.
If you use it as much as I do, you may find these additional macros useful. Editorial is a means for working with text and often it can seem like a heavy IDE that requires a huge time investment.
Here’s an Editorial workflow for use with TaskPaper formatted tasks. You can set a custom tag (I chose @alarm) and it will parse the attribute out to use as the reminder date for Fantastical.1
So an Editorial line like this:
:::text - Post Fantastical workflow for Editorial @mac @alarm(thursday at 7am) Will be sent to Fantastical as a new reminder with an alert for 7am on Thursday.
Here’s one from the workflow directory that creates a link from Fantastical (or Due.
This pair of macros for Editorial brings a whole new level of bookmarking to text files on the iPad. Ever want to bookmark a specific spot in a text file or remember where you left off editing a text file in Editorial? Me too. So, I created this pair of fairly simple macros.1 Here’s a little demo:
Bookmarker for Editorial from Macdrifter
The first macro saves the current text selection to a text file named EditorialBookmarks in the Dropbox file storage.
The Pythonista forums have suffered from spammers since almost the first day it went online. No more! There are new forums that sport the same elegant stylings of Editorial.
Some nice ideas here with a reference back to Caleb’s post about using Pandoc on iOS.
I tried using CloudConvert in Editorial but ran into upload errors and the support is almost non-existent. I moved on to other projects but this one is still enticing.
Ever wish Editorial supported tags? Wish granted.
This is quite clever and superior to most application dependent tags. It means the tags are actually part of the document text and transportable anywhere. That’s my biggest problem with adopting tags, they are ephemeral and generally lost when moving a document around.
This workflow assumes tags begin with a hash mark, which may not work for many (including me).
Check out the new browsable and searchable Editorial workflow repository. It’s excellent. The next update to Editorial will include an option for publishing workflows to the repository.
I have three tips for publishing to the new site:
Include your attribution Don’t hardcode login credentials Provide some documentation in the description and in any Python code
Let’s dive into using the Editorial JavaScript action and along the way learn some tricks for debugging and testing.
Editorial provides a JavaScript action that is executed against the currently open page in the web browser window. This is pretty powerful but the frustration level of using it can also be very high.
Unlike the Python views in Editorial, there is no JavaScript syntax highlighting, code completion or variable selection list.
In this continuing long-weekend of Editorial posts I thought I’d share a workflow for you screenwriters out there. This workflow was inspired1 by Jonathan Poritsky, someone who knows a bit about Fountain. If you are unfamiliar with Fountain, check that link. It’s a plain text format for writing scripts and screenplays that uses a custom syntax to indicate things like scenes and character dialog.
In Fountain, character names consist of a single line in all caps following a new empty line.
