notes – Jeff Thompson

There are a few things I always do when starting a project: make a NotesAndIdeas.txt and a Readme.md file. But opening a blank text file and saving it to the right location is a pain. To the rescue: a Finder keyboard shortcut.

1. WRITE A LITTLE SCRIPT

We’ll use an AppleScript to create the files. This requires two parts: getting the current directory and creating the file using a bash script. In the notes file, I’m adding a header to the top of the file, but you could add any text you want. Newlines must be escaped with two backslash characters: \\n .

tell application "Finder"
    select the front Finder window
    set targetFolder to insertion location as alias
    set folderPath to POSIX path of targetFolder
end tell

set makeNoteFile to "echo '\\nNOTES && IDEAS:\\n' >> " & quoted form of folderPath & "/NotesAndIdeas.txt"
do shell script makeNoteFile

tell application "Finder"

select the front Finder window

set targetFolder to insertion location as alias

set folderPath to POSIX path of targetFolder

end tell

set makeNoteFile to "echo '\\nNOTES && IDEAS:\\n' >> " & quoted form of folderPath & "/NotesAndIdeas.txt"

do shell script makeNoteFile

I save my scripts to a folder called Hacks to I can tweak them later, if necessary.

Continue reading “Tutorial: Create A Readme-File Finder Shortcut”