I’ve been toying with the idea of defining my own data structure and collection of AppleScript libraries so I can use text fields in any application, such as the Notes field in OF, as sort of extended custom data columns. At the moment it’s all just in the idea stage and I don’t really know how practical it would be, but I’ve been wanting this kind of extensibility for a long time. Has anyone already done anything like this that I might be able to piggyback on?
(Just being able to add columns with user-defined data types à la OmniOutliner would be ideal, actually, but I haven’t seen any hints that the Omni folks are planning this for OF.)
This is feasible, but likely to be frustrating. In general, I prefer JSON over XML/plist formats for this type of custom data placement; however, Applescript and JSON do not play well together. If you do go that route, check out the command line tool jq.
I agree with @dfay: Applescript can be a tremendous time suck and this is definitely a more extensive hack to squeeze functionality in somewhere.
When you use the phrase “this type of custom data placement” it sounds like you’ve got some experience. Since posting I’ve made a start at this (using JSON, in fact, and a background app called JSON Helper that’s available on the Mac App Store). It would be enormously helpful to see how other people are doing this instead of making everything up as I go along, so if there’s anything you can share about your own tools and workflow, or if you know of anything online, I’d really appreciate it.
As for the time suck aspect, yes it will take some investment up-front, but I expect the benefit of being able to plop a mini database table just about anywhere to be enormous.
