Mac Gems: Butler at your service. Dan Miller recently wrote about his favorite launcher utility, Quicksilver. So now it's my turn to chime in about my favorite launcher, Butler. Just in case you're not familiar with this type of program, a launcher is (at its most basic) a utility that lets you launch programs by first pressing some sort of activation key, and then typing a few letters of the program's name. But Butler, Quicksilver ( ), and LaunchBar ( ) all go well beyond the basics, as each provides additional tools that greatly increase your productivity. As Dan stated in his review, "Quicksilver, Launchbar, and Butler each do roughly the same things, and the choice between them is more a matter of subjective preference than of objective comparison. " So here's a look at why I subjectively prefer Butler. First and foremost, I call Butler my Swiss Army Knife.
As you can see, Butler truly is my Swiss Army Knife utility, replacing countless other programs that I would otherwise be using. Launch things Search via Spotlight. ThisService. What's all this, then? Built into Mac OS X is the concept of 'services'. A service is a small and targeted tool you can use in almost any program to insert text or do something useful with the current selection. Out of the box, there are services to search the selected text in Google, or look it up in a dictionary. Just select text (or place the insertion point where you want it) and pick a service from the Services menu in the right-click context menu (or in the application menu). Normally, you have to write services using Apple's Cocoa framework, using languages like C, C++ or Objective-C. With ThisService, anyone with a basic handle on programming can choose a language they're comfortable with (like AppleScript, Perl, Python, Ruby or JavaScript (with node.js)) to write a service in.
Many tasks suitable for services are easier to achieve with the right language for the task and you don't have to figure out the service integration book-keeping. Help! Tinnef Software - Products. Description Text Wielder is a native Mac OS X program that will let you do things such as search for text on your favorite search engine, check a stock quote, track a mail package, or clean up those messy email quotes all without ever leaving the application your in! How does it work? Text Wielder takes advantage of a Mac OS X feature called services. Services allow you to select text in any services-enabled application(e.g. Mail, Stickies, OmniWeb, TextEdit) and send it to another application, like Text Wielder, for processing. Text Wielder knows how to use the text you provide to it to do things like opening your browser and getting a map for a zipcode or looking up a word on an online dictionary. Text Wielder is powerful and extensible.
Text Wielder uses SFRL(Simple Find and Replace Language), a new technology made specifically for Text Wielder. Included Services/Scripts Text Wielder comes with more than 120 "scripts". Documentation Click here to see Text Wielder help documents. Mac OS X Services. Volume Number: 20 (2004) Issue Number: 12 Column Tag: Programming by Clint Bagwell Remember the Services menu? It was one of the then-new features advertised with the coming of the first version of OS X. Three generations later Services are still a core component of the contemporary Mac OS and also one of its best kept-secrets. Developers and power users know about Services' system-wide, interactive functionality, but home users can also make the most of their many practical uses.
About Services Services were one of the many NEXT innovations that were incorporated into the first version of OS X. Let's look at a practical example using just the Services that are already built in to OS X. Unfortunately, whenever I introduce someone to Services, they get really excited about it for five minutes and never use them again. Ready-Made Toolbox We have looked at the services already included in OS X; a user can even further enhance productivity with add-ons. So what makes up a Service menu item?