No question about it. I already purchased the upgrade to Path Finder. $5 off this week only. That makes it $15 to upgrade or $35 if you have never experienced the alternate reality of the Finder¹.

Path Finder has saved my bacon many times. Whenever I need to transfer a large number of files, or a few very large files, only Path Finder has been able to do it. That’s just scratching the surface of the app.

I noticed this comment in the latest Default Folder X update:

Recent OpenMeta tags are now read separately from Leap and Yep because the new Mac App Store versions of these applications cannot share their recent tags via the standard OpenMeta mechanism.

I only use OpenMeta with one application, NVAlt. That’s because NVAlt syncs Simplenote tags with OpenMeta. It’s convenient because I have several Hazel rules that match the OpenMeta tags to trigger rules. It would be a minor inconvenience if that happened, but not a tragedy. I’ve already started preparing for the end of OpenMeta.

It makes me wonder what the future of OpenMeta is. It also makes me wonder when Apple will make Finder comments actually compatible with tags. I’ve never felt comfortable with the future of OpenMeta. I wonder if the AppStore will mean the end of OpenMeta.¹

Dripps(AppStore)¹ is a very clever menu bar app that makes the process of sharing Dropbox files extremely easy.

Drag a file to the menu bar icon and Dripps uploads to Dropbox and grabs a shareable and shortened URL. The URL is added to the clipboard but Dripps also keeps a running list of the links and the number of times it has been viewed.

The developer Web site has a nice overview of the app, but I really enjoyed the blog post about how he came up with the idea and just built it to satisfy his own needs.

One caveat though: As with all Mac App Store apps that have Dropbox integration, it fails for me when my Dropbox folder is on a secondary drive by way of a symlink. I have a SSD primary drive and I didn’t want to eat up space with Dropbox. Now it looks like every MAS app has the same problem (named sandboxing). Dripps works on my Macbook without the symlink.

I think it’s obvious how much a like Marked by Brett Terpstra. Just look in the sidebar for this site. That’s not an ad. That’s an “I ❤ Marked” tattoo.

Marked¹ 1.4 is out today and it is a tremendous update. I don’t understand Brett’s version numbers. This feels like a 2.0 feature release. It’s a massive update and it’s still only $4.

About Marked

Marked is a markdown viewer. That doesn’t sound very interesting to most people, but you have to see it to believe it. I open a document in Marked and then open it in a text editor. As I write, the fully processed and rendered view is updated in Marked every time the document is saved.

But Marked 1.4 adds some amazing new features. I’ve put together a short video demonstrating how I use Marked. To keep it short, I’m only showing a couple of features, but I think it’s true value shines through.

It’s For Writing

Marked is not just a dumb renderer. Marked is an interactive tool for Markdown and HTML authors. Several of the tools are unlike anything else I’ve seen.

Watching The Edits Happen

When I use Marked, I don’t just render the final version of a document to see how pretty it is. I have Marked open the whole time and jump between my text editor and Marked. Marked will call out the location where the last edit was made and optionally scroll to the window to that positon.

Marked also has built in search with match highlighting. Sure, I could do this in my text editor, but then all of the HTML is also going to be subject to the search. Marked only looks at the formatted text.

If I resize an image, Marked will update with the new version. If I change a heading style or completely rewrite a paragraph, Marked will display it as soon as I save.

If I’m working in NVAlt, it’s like I’m writing in Marked. NVAlt continuously saves, so Marked continuously updates with the edits.

Link Validation

Link validation is a tremendous tool. Marked will process all links in the document and display a HUD indicating which links are valid. How much is that worth to most bloggers? At least $4!

Document Index

Marked 1.4 also shows a document index at the click of a mouse (or hot key). Marked parses the Markdown headers to create a document hierarchy. Clicking on a heading scrolls to the desired location in Marked and displays a subtle highlight over the line.

The document index represents the heading levels with both font and indentation level, making it easy to see if the wrong heading format was chosen. The document is fully navigable by both mouse and keyboard shortcuts. While viewing the index of a large document, just hit the space key and start typing the name of a heading to automatically filter the list.

The document index is a very powerful tool for working with large Markdown documents.

Writing Analysis

Marked offers some of the best writing analysis tools I have. The word repetition finder is a great feature. Marked highlight words that appear multiple times. Clicking on a word shows exactly where the repetitions occur.

For those of us that like the simplicity of plain text, but also want to get a feel for the quality of a piece of writing, Marked offers Readability Statistics. I don’t use it often, but it’s a good option to have.

It’s for HTML Too

Marked handles HTML like a champ. While there are several built in CSS preferences, Marked can also use custom CSS to preview Markdown. Personally, I prefer the built in Swiss-Style.

Once the text is ready for exporting to HTML, Marked is your best assistant. Not only is there a superb source view, Marked can copy the HTML right to the clipboard ready for insertion.

Someone might get the impression that Marked is only good for working in Markdown. Not so! Write in HTML to get the same benefits. Marked will render the HTML just as quickly and provide all of the same features.

Made for Exporting

Marked also exports the rendered product of the Markdown and HTML to a variety of formats.

• HTML
• PDF
• RTF
• Print Preview

I think of Marked as the second step in working with HTML and Markdown. It’s rare that I want raw Markdown. I usually want something I can send to a non-nerd that isn’t working in a markup language. I’m not going to send Markdown to my mom.²

Marked Version 1.4

Here’s a brief list of some of the new features in Marked 1.4

• There’s a CLI for the nerds
• Syntax highlighting for code blocks
• Scrivener 2.0 support
• One of the most beautiful help systems of any app I’ve used. Really.
• Link popover for external links.
• Highlight.js can automatically be included with saved HTML.

Hazel 3 brings the ability to create custom matching rules using AppleScript or Shell Scripts. This seemingly subtle addition takes Hazel to an entirely new level. I’ve just begun tinkering with this and already I’ve developed some rules that seem almost magical.

MMD Meta Data

MultiMarkdown supports meta data headers in text. These are arbitrary header lines in the file that begin at line 1 and end at the first empty line. The meta data category ends with a colon and is followed by the value. The meta data can be anything but there are some commonly accepted standards. Upon conversion of the MMD file, the meta fields are stripped out. However, they can first be accessed by the MultiMarkdown tools.

Just check out Fletcher Penny’s guide.

title: This is my title

date: 04/02/2012

category: markdown

tags: @blog

    @markdown

    @hazel

In the example above, I’m using the standard meta fields “title”, “date”, and “category”. I’ve also added my own custom field called “tags”. Each tag goes on a single line. Additional tags follow on subsequent lines with at least one level of indentation.

The Python Markdown Module

I’ve written about this module before. I’m not going to rehash all of it, but this is a very good Python tool for accessing the MMD meta data.

The Hazel Rule

I’ve created the following rule in Hazel to move files to my Note Archive when the “@archive” tag is added to the MMD meta data field.

Note that this is a shell script that runs a Python script. The Shell path parameter needs to point to the path for Python.

Here’s the Python script that does the matching magic. As usual, this should not be used to operate heavy machinery. It’s ugly and poorly written. There’s way too many IF statements. I just wrote this over the weekend and put it into use today. I’m sure it’s full of bad style and ticking time bombs.

import markdown

import os

import sys



## For Hazel. Received the file path from the rule execution.

filePath = sys.argv[1]



## The tag to look for

matchTag = "@archive"



try:

    myFile = open(filePath, "r")

    rawText = myFile.read()

    myFile.close()

    fileName = os.path.basename(filePath)

    # Start off using the file name as the post title

    title = os.path.splitext(fileName)[0]

    # Handle the odd characters. Just kill them.

    rawText = rawText.decode('utf-8')



    # Process with MD Extras and meta data support

    md = markdown.Markdown(extensions = ['extra', 'meta'])



    # Get the html text

    html = md.convert(rawText)



## extract the tags but keep them as a list



    if md.Meta:

        if 'tags' in md.Meta:

            headerTags = md.Meta['tags']

            if matchTag in headerTags:

                #print matchTag

## Tag was not found. Returning "0" will indicate a pass, anything else will indicate a fail.

                sys.exit(0)

            else:

                sys.exit(1)

        else:

            sys.exit(1)

    else:

        sys.exit(1)



## This is bad form, but if there is no Markdown meta field, just return a failed match.

except AttributeError:

    sys.exit(1)

except Exception, e:

    sys.exit(1)

About the Script

This rule is hard coded to match on the MMD “tags” meta data field matching the tag “@archive”. The script received the file path from Hazel. It then reads all of the text and extracts the MMD meta fields if they exist.

For this script to be of any use to Hazel, it needs to exit properly. It took me awhile (and an email to Hazel support) to figure this out. A successful match should exit the Python script with sys.exit(0). Anything else will tell hazel that it did not match. If the exit statement is omitted the it will likely count as a positive match.

I’ve tried to exit without matching where ever possible. I don’t want the rule to get stuck. If it doesn’t work, I’ll know it.

WARNING

Be aware, creating inefficient scripts with poor error handling can bring Hazel to its knees. I know. That entire Python script will be executed with every file in the directory that Hazel is running it against. I would not add much complexity or processing to a condition script.

Handle with care. Pun intended, and very bad.

Efficient Matching

I’ve tweaked the matching rules a bit to make it more efficient. I don’t need every file run through the Python script. I only want the newly changed files to make it that far, so I’ve added the nested “If all” conditions.

I don’t fully understand the Hazel matching engine, but this gives me the fastest processing. It will only run newly modified text files through the Python script. On a directory of over 500 text files, this Hazel rule executes in about a second. Without those extra rules, it can take almost a minute.

What’s the Point?

I think this is quite powerful. I’m using plain text as if it was file meta data. I’m doing away with Hazel rules that rely on OpenMeta tags for text files. I think this is a better alternative.

MMD meta data can really be anything. I could have meta data with a file path to direct the file. I could have additional processing commands for the markdown conversion.

The rule involves a bit of code, which is counter to some of the reasons to use Hazel (no code scripting). This example is a basic shell that could be used to match on other MMD meta data fields and values.