Hey Darcy, excellent. Yes, I intentionally avoided going into any
more detail than I did so Krister could just get started and get a
feel for it. <smile> I also thought of going into the various saving
options as well, but chose not to for now.
Excellent topic for a podcast.
Thanks for the note and am looking forward to catching the cast!…
Smiles,
Cara :)
On May 17, 2008, at 12:30 PM, Darcy Burnard wrote:
Hey Cara. Great explanation of automator. The only thing I would
add is that most often the actions pass information from one to the
next. For instance, an action might generate some text. This text
is then passed in to the next action, and then something else will
happen. Here's an example. Suppose you wanted a workflow that
converted a text file in to audio. The first action you might use
is get text from text edit document. This grabbs the text from the
currently open document in text edit. The action then passes that
text to the next action, which in this case is "text to audio
file." This action makes the text in to speech and produces an aiff
file. The path to that file is sent off to the next action, which
would probably be something to convert that file to mp3.
I'm actually planning on recording a segment for screenless
switchers tonight, demonstrating automator. It will just be a
beginner thing, probably using the example I outlined above. What
I'll probably do is make the segment available ahead of time to some
people who are experienced with automator, so that they can critique
it before it makes it in to a screenless switchers episode.
Darcy
On 17-May-08, at 7:08 AM, Cara Quinn wrote:
Hey Krister, thanks for your note.
No, the Automator is specifically designed for non-programmers and
is completely accessible with VO from my exp so far. Of course,
there are others here who have had more exp with it so they may
want to contribute as well.
it's actually quite simple to get started. the concept you're
working with, with the Automator is that you're simply creating a
workflow, which is simply a list of connected actions. The
Automator window shows this workflow as an area with which you can
interact with VO to see / edit your list of actions.
so there are essentially four main areas you'll be working with for
the most part. These are the workflow, the actions library, the
actions table and the description area.
As I said, the workflow displays just that, the list of actions
which make up your workflow.
• the actions library shows the applications on your system that
have automator actions associated with them, which means that
Automator can access them and use them in a workflow.
• the actions table shows the actions themselves, that are
available for the given application.
• and lastly, the description area is just that. It's an
interactive html area that describes the action you've selected in
more detail than just it's name.
So basically the process goes something like this:
• select an application from the actions library.
• select an action from the actions table.
• Add that action to your workflow by double clicking it / pressing
return on it.
• Interact with your workflow and edit that action's parameters if
you'd like.
• Rinse and repeat! lol!
Once you have a workflow that you'd like, you can test it by
running the workflow in automator in various ways.
I hope this gets you started, and if I've missed anything you were
curious about, please do let me know. <smile> I may write an
article about this for Lioncourt.com and at the moment, I don't
believe there are any podcasts on it, but that's a possibility too.
Have a terrific weekend and hope this helps!…
Smiles,
Cara :)
On May 17, 2008, at 3:45 AM, Krister Ekstrom wrote:
Hey i just wondered if the Automator is hard to use for a non-
programmer and if there is any podcast or something to read
somewhere about Automator from a blind persons viewpoint, so that
i could perhaps start discovering this tool?
Thanks for any answers.
/Krister
16 maj 2008 kl. 20.35 skrev Cara Quinn:
Hey All, Happy Friday to you!… :)
I just thought I'd send this along as a nice lil tidbit about
Automator. These tips may have been chatted about before, so
forgive the rehash if that's the case, K? :)
Anyway, I often have the need to resize photos quickly to attach
to emails or such, and I've recently discovered that one can do
it in Preview, but only with Automator actions. I.E. If you
select the Scale Images action; as you add it to your workflow,
you'll be asked if you would like to add a Finder option to save
a copy of the file or resize the original file. So once you
choose your options, including the size you'd like the images
scaled to, you can then save the workflow as a Finder plugin. So
then when you select any images in Finder, and ctrl click them,
you will find the option to resize them. It's amazingly cool and
easy. they will be resized, and placed in a folder you set in
your workflow.
I used to use the Image Resizer Powertoy on WinXP so this is a
terrific option which is way more customizable and tres cool!…
The second thing I'd found while working with Scaling Images was
another Preview option to simply convert a pdf file to text or
rtf. So, you simply add the 'Extract PDF Text' action to your
workflow and save it as a Finder plugin. then, when you simply
ctrl click a pdf file, you'll get the option to save it as the
file type you selected in your workflow. The action has a choice
for the folder you'd like to have the file saved in, however, for
myself, I'm finding it a bit finicky as it seems to want to keep
saving to my desktop but we'll see what happens. Even if that's
the case, it's still way cool!
Anyway, I just thought I'd share these in case they hadn't been
discussed before. Hope they help.
Have a terrific day!…
Smiles,
Cara :)
---
View my Online Portfolio at:
http://www.onemodelplace.com/CaraQuinn
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View my Online Portfolio at:
http://www.onemodelplace.com/CaraQuinn
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View my Online Portfolio at:
http://www.onemodelplace.com/CaraQuinn
