Later runs decreased the gap to around two times. When first running the script, Perl was five times as fast as Python. It looks like the difference was in how long it takes to load the necessary libraries. I used time on the command line to test the speed difference. This ran slower than I thought it should, so I rewrote it in Perl, and it was faster. My solution was to write the escape script in Python. Automator won’t do text processing directly, and there doesn’t seem to be a good way to do this in AppleScript. My Google Scholar Service has to escape the search terms so that they can be sent in the search URL. This saves time copying and pasting into a new window.Īutomator and AppleScript don’t have all the features needed for fancier scripts, but they provide a way to call fancier scripts or other programs. I just select some text, right click, then select Search with Google Scholar, and it opens my search in Safari. I used this to create a Service to automatically open a new web browser tab with a Google Scholar search. When you create an a new Automator Workflow you have the option for it to be a Service. Now I just use the Add to Bibliography service, saving time and typos.Īpple Automator makes Services more useful by providing an easy way to create your own. ![]() Or if the database doesn’t include citation files, I’d manually enter it. Before, I’d save the BibTeX reference as a text file, open it with BibDesk, move the citation to my current bibliography file, and delete the temp file. When I need to add a paper to my bibliography I can just select its BibTeX entry from an online database, then right-click (control-click) and select the Add to Bibliography service. Since I am writing (using LaTeX) and doing literature searches, I spend a lot of time with BibDesk, TeXShop, and a web browser. I’m now constantly using the Services menu. In many programs, the applicable services will show up in the right-click menu. This makes it much easier to find the service you need. ![]() Snow Leopard fixes this only the services that you can actually use show up in a list directly under Services. Because this is so many clicks, and because a lot of services that don’t apply to the current context were listed (grayed out), it was often faster to do a task manually. To run a service called Task, you’d click on Name of active program in the menu bar > Services > Name of program that does task > Task. Before Snow Leopard, Services weren’t contextual. ![]() Services were occasionally useful in OS X 10.5, now with 10.6 they are a great feature. The Apple Services menu is a timesaving feature that has been improved in Snow Leopard.
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