Before I try to teach myself about AppleScripts I was wondering if anyone can tell me whether an idea I have for a script is even possible.
I am a student and I use OmniOutliner to track my research (i.e. as a research diary). Rather than manually copying and pasting my search terms from a database or catalogue in Safari to OmniOutliner, I was hoping to run a script that could track my keystrokes and add the data to my open OmniOutliner file. Is this even possible using AppleScripts (or something else), or am I dreaming too big?
AppleScripts can send keypresses, but they cannot monitor them.
What you want to do is possible using the system APIs (CGEventTap specifically), but obviously this is an extremely powerful capability. As such, Apple prohibits such apps from the Mac App Store.
I don’t know any apps off the top of my head that do exactly what you want, but perhaps someone else here does. :)
I do know of some apps that specifically manage citations (Papers, Sente). Alternatively, apps like LaunchBar and Alfred can keep a clipboard history. One of those might be enough for what you need.
Thanks very much KyleS for your reply. I’ll definitely looking into LaunchBar and Alfred…hopefully I can make them work.
I also thought last night about trying to develop/adapting something like Omnifocus’ Clipping service (with a keyboard shortcut) that could create a new line in OmniOutliner for the selected search terms (and, possibly, a snapshot of the results…that would be amazing!).
I don’t suppose anyone knows of a clipping script for OmniOutliner, or how easy it would be to develop something along the lines just described.
