I know I can add a url and have that text automatically turned into a link, but how do I select text and turn that text into a link to a URL I specify?
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I would really like to see this feature implemented too.
I did finally figure out that you can paste in a URL, then select it and change the dispayed text to be something different, which gives you the same results in a roundabout way. It would still be nice to be able to select text and turn it into a link.
2 Likes
Great idea and it should have the keyboard shortcut Cmd-K which is used by TextEdit, Mail, among others.
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Me too was facing the same issue. Impressed with your answer. Thanks
@philipt18 said
you can paste in a URL, then select it and change the dispayed text to be something different
Just fyi ā this would be quick work with Keyboard Maestro, or any macro program.
That said, it should be built-in to OO, imho. Afaik, Apple has made this link-making available platform-wide.
Just fyi ā this would be quick work with Keyboard Maestro, or any macro program.
Tho ā perhaps I am missing something ā it doesnāt look as if the scripting API gives access to the text selection ?
(It appears to expose only row selection, which is not really what you need, but I suppose you could still use the clipboard and textutil to build and paste an RTF encoded link)
Perhaps quick -> quick-ishā¦ ?
(Not hard to see the appeal of widget-free Markdown at these moments ā¦ )
In the meanwhile, typing the url first, and then ctrl-clicking to choose Edit Link and get this:
does seem workable ā¦
PS to speed the work up a bit, in case anyone does try that with something like Keyboard Maestro, an AppleScript incantation for building the RTF might look something like:
if (strURL is not "") and (strTitle is not "") then
set strHTML to quoted form of ("<font face=\"helvetica\"><a href=\"" & strURL & "\">" & strTitle & "</a></font>")
do shell script "echo " & strHTML & " | textutil -format html -convert rtf -stdin -stdout | pbcopy -Prefer rtf"
end if
Keyboard Maestro and AppleScript are different programs. They work differently. Check out Keyboard Maestro ā itās a superb and in many ways exemplary program (just a satisfied user).
Here is a thread I turned up with, imho, helpful information for scripting (I donāt use AppleScript, only due to ignorance).
Here is a quickly-written Keyboard Maestro macro. It copies the selected text (in OO), pastes it into a TextEdit RTF file, adds the previous System Clipboard as a link, copies the newly created link, and pastes it OO. I used TextEdit in order to get to the āEdit ā¹ Linkā command (which OO doesnāt give us access to). Iām sure someone skilled could improve it. As is, it works.
Looks good ā I guess you could also bypass TextEdit, if you wanted to.
There is a draft of a āK at
which:
- Copies the text selected in OO4
- Prompts for a url
- Pastes back as a rich text hyperlink
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Thanks for this. I did check it out on the KM site as well.
I would probably have by-passed TextEdit if I knew AppleScript š .
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The suggestions the work-arounds by the responders (as well as their programming insights about how OF works) is downright impressive so kudos to all of you! To a non-programmer non-tinkerer who simply wants a streamlined experience with common key commands and shortcuts consistent across Appleās OS, these suggestions are work-arounds which would not be necessary if the good folks at the Omni Group could add the Cmd-K convention referenced by several responders. Hereās to hoping they are monitoring these forums. Cheers everyone.
3 Likes
I so love Omni that I hesitate to say anything, but Iām sincerely surprised at the round-about way necessary to create links. As many have noted, most apps I use allow Command-K. Is this not a standard, Apple way to do things? Is it standard, but thereās a problem implementing it with Omniās code (perhaps a carryover from NeXT code)? Iām more than a bit surprised that OO5 still does it this way.
I hope this issue is āfixedāā¦and Iām certainly open to learning why the current method is ābetterā or āmore powerfulā or āmore elegant.ā
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Here is an applescript snippet that will change the text of the selected row into a link based on the clipboardās contents. Excessive apostrophe alert is in effect.
tell application "OmniOutliner"
tell selected row of document 1
set topic cell's text's style's attribute "link"'s value to the clipboard
end tell
end tell
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Helpful that everyone submitted scripts and workarounds, but very surprising that this is not part of the text editor.
Even from AppleScript I wasnāt able to find a way to add a hyperlink to just the selected text, rather than the entire rowās text ā because I couldnāt get the selected text from AppleScript.
I could almost certainly do it by copying the selected text and modifying the clipboard to add a link with AppleScriptObjC, or even making a service to do it, but this seems like a lot of work for something thatās implemented in TextEdit and as @ibuys mentions, should probably be part of an 18 year old product!
I ended up making a slightly longer version of the script that prompts for the link destination, using the clipboard as the default:
tell application "OmniOutliner"
local _link, _result
set _link to ""
try
set _link to (the clipboard as string)
end try
set _result to (display dialog Ā¬
"Link selected rowās text to destination:" default answer _link Ā¬
buttons {"Cancel", "Link"} default button 2)
set _link to _result's text returned
tell selected row of document 1
set topic cell's text's style's attribute "link"'s value to _link
end tell
end tell
And a corresponding script to remove links from the selected rows (useful when copying from OmniFocus into OmniOutliner to clear all the omnifocus:// links):
tell application "OmniOutliner"
tell selected row of document 1
clear topic cell's text's style's attribute "link"
end tell
end tellI havenāt found a way to accomplish this with selected text but with a more explicit reference, you can en-link a segment of a topic. (Just made that word up :)
set word's style's attribute "link"'s value of words 1 thru 2 of topic of child 1 of document 1 to the clipboard
It does mean that you have to figure out how to point to the text you wish to add the link to. That can be a pain. You should also be able to work with characters rather than words, etcā¦. Perhaps if you could properly convert the reference to the selected text to something more explicit, then you could turn this into a service and give it a keyboard shortcut. Maybe after I sleep for a while. I do hope itās possible.
As an aside, I find that a lot of apps have issues when working with the selected text. And as a further aside, I find TextEdit to be worse than any app that implements Applescript. Iāve spent (or wasted) untold hours slamming my head against those rocks.
