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HomeiOS DevelopmentCrafting a customized phrase depend service — Erica Sadun

Crafting a customized phrase depend service — Erica Sadun


I simply occurred to wish to do a variety of phrase counts right now so I put collectively a service to make my life simpler. Whereas, I carried out my preliminary work on Mojave however the identical strategy works all the best way to Large Sur and, presumably, the upcoming macOS Malibu Barbie.

Open Automator

To get began, launch automator and create a brand new doc.

Choose Fast Motion, Select from the brand new doc dialog:

Add Scripting

Drop in a Run Shell Script after which an Apple Script. You may search from them within the top-left nook. Drag them so as into the appropriate panel.

I used /bin/bash for my shell script, surprising, I do know, as I’m well-known for my love of all issues csh. Be happy to make use of no matter shell fits you. The primary non-argument shell variable ($1 right here) corresponds to highlighted textual content, which can be utilized by the system contextual menu:

echo `echo $1 | wc -w` phrases. `echo $1 | wc -c` characters.

Swap the pop-up for piping output (“passing enter”) from “to stdin” to “as arguments”. This enables the AppleScript to learn the chosen knowledge and current a dialog. In the event you neglect, you’ll get empty enter and one thing like “1 phrases, 0 characters” on a regular basis.

on run {enter, parameters}
    show dialog enter as string buttons {"OK"}
finish run

Save and Run

Save the motion. I known as mine “Phrase Depend”.

The motion mechanically saves to ~/Library/Companies, in case you need to discover or delete it sooner or later.

% ls
Phrase Depend.workflow/

Your new fast motion mechanically provides a customized service to your contextual pop-ups. Simply spotlight something you need to depend, from textual content on an online web page to your work in a doc and open the contextual menu:

Ensure that the output appears cheap. For best testing, copy the textual content to your clipboard after which use wc instantly in terminal.

And, then increase, you might be finished.

Let me know if this was useful.

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