"Better" Evernote Integration for Launchbar

[lukas.pustina]

Hi guys,

out of my own suffering, I created a "Better" Evernote Integration for Launchbar. It mitigates the current short comings of the build-in integration like search terms are concatenated with %20 as in URL encoded space, there is no preview of found notes you could select from, and creating new notes does not work with Evernote more recent than version 5.

It currently offers the following features:

• Search queries may make use of the full Evernote Search Grammar.
  
  For example:
  search terms -- matches notes that contain these terms in its full text
  intitle:"Words in title" -- maches notes with these words in the title
  created:day-1 -- matches notes created yesterday or today
  todo:* -- matches notes that contain todos
  
  You can open any matching note by navigating to the search result and pressing <Return>.
  
• Create new note
  
  You can easily create a new note in the default notebook by entering the new note's title as a search query and then pressing <Shift>+<Return>.
  
• Open Evernote
  
  In case you want to open Evernote's main window, just press enter before entering a search query.

You can find the source code at https://github.com/lukaspustina/Evernote.lbaction and can download a release version at https://github.com/lukaspustina/Evernote.lbaction/archive/v0.1.0.zip.

I hope it helps you and eases the pain when working with Evernote.

Cheers,
Lukas

[agentcross]

Hi Lukas,

that's a great timing ! I am using launchbar just for 3 days now but this action is what I already was looking for ! Thanks a lot, I really love the way it works !

Just one question, when I downloaded your .zip it didn't contain a .lbaction file so I couldn't just launch and install it. Instead I opened the action editor and created a new action by copying your scripts into the action. Hence, I have a different info.plist now etc..

I guess this is not how you intended people to use it? What did I do wrong so that I couldn't just double click and install it?

Thanks,
Christian

[lukas.pustina]

Hello Christian,

I'm happy you can make any use of the action.

Regarding your question, you have two options to install the action:
1. You clone the Github repository and double click the directory -- cf. the readme.
2. You download the a "release zip". The release zip file name contains the release version, e.g.,

Code: Select all

Evernote.lbaction-0.1.1

. Just remove the version from the filename like

Code: Select all

Evernote.lbaction

and then you can double click the action.

Feel free to ask any other question. You can also use the issue tracker of the Github repository.

Cheers,
Lukas

[lukas.pustina]

New Version 0.1.1

The search results now support tags and show the title, the date of the last modification, the tags -- if any --, and the notebook of each matching note.

[agentcross]

Ok great, got it.

I also added the functionality known from file and folder action to directly delete note from the suggestion list. Unfortunately I do not know how to trigger this with ⌘+ delete (backspace) so I am using ⌘+return instead (for the moment) but this feels really unnatural ..

Do you have any idea how to trigger the deletion directly by pressing ⌘+ delete?

[lukas.pustina]

I'm afraid this is not possible, because Launchbar does not trigger scripts when the <delete> key is pressed; regardless of the state of the modifier keys.

[agentcross]

Oh, that would be a real drawback.. I would love to implement different shortcuts to my customized actions. That would make it even more powerful. I just contacted the customer service just in case they know any solution or work around.

Anyway, your action is awesome and I made some little adaptions to fit my needs even better. When hitting spacebar after slecting Evernote in LaunchBar the suggestions do not only show the recent notes, but also show some of the modifiers that I use the most. This makes it even quicker to use for me and when I start typing to perform the basic search they disappear to not be disrupting when selecting one of the found notes.

Perhaps this is something that might be useful for you as well.

[lukas.pustina]

Hi Christian,

let me know what customer service will say.

Regarding your "Saved Searches" I have to say I like the idea. I don't know how to generalise this; different people will likely want to have different searches. Let me think about this. You can create an issue / feature request for this on Github https://github.com/lukaspustina/Evernote.lbaction/issues, so we can track it.

Cheers,
Lukas

[agentcross]

Just got the reply from customer service.

Using other short cuts than modifier key + return to trigger an action is unfortunately only possible for index-searches due to different reasons.

[lukas.pustina]

New version 0.1.2

Adds support for notes with `'` in title.

[lukas.pustina]

New Version 0.2.0

Link to Github release: https://github.com/lukaspustina/Evernote.lbaction/releases/tag/v0.2.0
Link to documentation and screenshots: https://github.com/lukaspustina/Evernote.lbaction/blob/master/README.md

All new Features

* Open Evernote
* Search for Notes with the full power of Evernote's search grammar
* Open Search Result
* Copy Note Link of Search Result
* Open Evernote Window with Search Query for narrowing down your search
* Favorite Notes for shortcuts to frequently used notes
* Saved Searches for shortcuts to frequently used searches
* Create new Note
* Synchronize Now to trigger notes synchronisation
* Action Settings configure debug output, number of search results, favorite notes, saved searches

Under the hood

Unit tests
Automatic tests using Travis CI
Better AppleScript support with escaping of ' in all titles, tags, and notebook names

Thanks to agentcross for his support, opinions, and testing.

[SamVilde]

Just a note to say thank you. I have been trialing Launchbar for the past week, and this script is making all the difference.

[lukas.pustina]

Hello SamVilde, thanks for your message. I really enjoyed reading that this integration is of such use for you.

[arose10]

Hi. Excited to try this out. I've downloaded the ZIP file and deactivated the built-in Evernote integration. What do I do now? (I'm not sure what is meant by "double click the cloned repository directory in Finder." What exactly should I be double clicking?) Thanks in advance.

[lukas.pustina]

Hi arose10. Github appends the release number to the extracted folder name of this integration. The folder should be named 'Evernote.lbaction-0.2.0'. Just remove the the '-0.2.0' part from the folder name in Finder. The icon of the folder should change from a generic "blue" folder icon to a "yellow" Launchbar Action icon. Double clicking the latter should automatically install the Evernote integration in Launchbar.

Please come back to me, if you have encounter any difficulties.