AppleScript to Export Notes in OPML

[aroddick]

(Hello fellow archaeologist!)

[mjvalente]

(Hello there as well!)

[tappazee]

Updated the gist, although I am likely to keep the bookends-tool source always up-to-date and it is the same script:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iando ... pplescript

This script is excellent! Is there a way to preserve any formatting (bold/italics/underline) given to notes from bookends? I use bold/italics to distinguish quotations from my commentary on them. Thanks

[iandol]

The applescript interface returns text without any formatting (this script uses the older event system, but the newer dictionary also returns text). I suppose there may be a possibility to create a custom format including the note field, and return it as formatted text like HTML, I tested it and bold text in a note does make it to the output...

Code: Select all

tell application "Bookends"
	set myRefs to selected publication items of front library window
	set rtfRefs to format myRefs using "Printout.fmt" as HTML
end tell

but the next question would be the best way to encode it in the OPML, and whether whatever reads the OPML would understand it. I personally don't have time to edit this script.

One other solution would be if Bookends could convert its formatting (which I assume is RTF encoded?), to markdown when accessing individual itemsso at least the formatting would be plain text yet readable to other applications.

[tappazee]

Thanks iandol, much appreciated. I have no scripting expertise so I think I'll have to admit defeat there. I'm no going to try to figure out whether there's a way to get paragraph breaks within single bookends notecards as an alternative way to distinguish between quotes and commentary.

[tappazee]

The applescript interface returns text without any formatting (this script uses the older event system, but the newer dictionary also returns text). I suppose there may be a possibility to create a custom format including the note field, and return it as formatted text like HTML, I tested it and bold text in a note does make it to the output...

I've now found out, courtesy of Jon, how to make multi-paragraph notecards (double returns initiate a new notecard, so separate any returns with a space to keep them within a single notecard). So this provides me with a way to differentiate quotes and my commentary instead of bold/italics.

This leads me to ask if it's possible for your script to enable these within-single-notecard paragraph separations to be reflected in the notes as they appear in scrivener? I just tried it out and they are not currently. Thanks in advance and sorry to pester.

[iandol]

As far as I can tell, Notes are already split into separate cards (look at the raw OPML to see), and Scrivener imports them as children of the OPML document:

Screen Shot 2021-03-25 at 14.21.35_SMALL.png (38.28 KiB) Viewed 75607 times

At the moment the title is not parsed, this could be added by using markdown headers?

[iandol]

Actually, headers are parsed if formatted correctly:

Bookends:

Screen Shot 2021-03-25 at 14.32.11_SMALL.png (29.94 KiB) Viewed 75605 times

Scrivener:

Screen Shot 2021-03-25 at 14.32.39_SMALL.png (9.91 KiB) Viewed 75605 times