PRODUCTS : BBEDIT : AUTOMATOR
Automator Support in BBEdit
BBEdit is one of the first third-party applications to support Automator because we always stay on top of Apple's new technologies!
BBEdit has offered robust and extensive AppleScript support for many years, including recordability and even attachability, but Automator is much more than “AppleScript on steroids”—it means you can now leverage BBEdit’s legendary text processing power for your workflows.
While AppleScript requires you to have the text you want to manipulate in a BBEdit window, Automator Actions do not—they work “behind the scenes” with any text, even text not contained in a BBEdit document. Plus, even beginners can easily create Workflows without the learning curve of AppleScript.
Automator in Action
(click the image above to see it full size in a new browser window)
This Workflow collects DVD release information from iCal and massages it into an easily readable format. While the last step does use BBEdit for the final destination, any Automator-capable application that accepts text would work.
Automator Actions Provided by BBEdit
- Add and Remove Prefix or Suffix
- These actions will prepend or append the supplied string to each line processed (or remove same).
- Change Case
- This action will change the case of the provided text according to the specified rules.
- Concatenate
- This action creates a single output string from the passed input. Automator passes elements as lists, so frequently a Concatenate action is required to have all the elements in a single document, instead of each element being in its own.
- Convert Spaces to Tabs
- This action will convert each run of N space characters into a tab character.
- Convert Tabs to Spaces
- This action will convert each tab character into the specified number of spaces.
- Educate Quotes
- This action will convert ASCII quotes into their typographer equivalent.
- Straighten Quotes
- This action will convert typographer quotes into their ASCII equivalent.
- Get Contents of BBEdit Document
- This action will get the contents of the frontmost or passed text documents in BBEdit according to the options you set.
- Set Contents of BBEdit Document
- This action will replace or insert the passed text into the frontmost text document in BBEdit according to the options you set.
- New BBEdit Document
- This action creates a new BBEdit document from the input text.
- Open Files in BBEdit
- This action will open the passed files in BBEdit.
- Extract Lines Containing
- This action will return all lines in the input string which contain the specified string.
- Remove Duplicate Lines
- This action will eliminate duplicates from the provided lines according to the specified rules.
- Sort Lines
- This action will sort the provided lines according to the specified rules.
- Search and Replace
- This action will search the input string, and replace all matches with specified string.
- Delete Lines Containing
- This action will return all lines in the input string which do not the specified string.
- Normalize Line Breaks
- This action will change all line breaks into the format specified.
- Convert to ASCII
- This action will convert the input text into an ASCII-only representation.
- Zap Gremlins
- This action will convert each non-ASCII character as specified in the configuration.