A powerful new iCal action for Quicksilver
Tuesday, December 12th, 2006
Benjamin Harley, creator of ABGMerge, the Gmail contacts-Address Book syncing app, has also scripted a powerful iCal action for Quicksilver 
, which is more flexible and has more options than Quicksilver’s built-in iCal plugin.
It’s complicated (power comes at a cost) but offers a speedy way to quickly enter a complete iCal item on the fly whichever app you are in. I use the current public beta of MailTags to do this when I am in Mail.app, which has the added bonus of automatically creating a URL link back to the email in question. But I’m not always in Mail (sadly).
UPDATE: You can get the latest version of the script here
Download and unzip it, then place it in your ~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/Actions folder.
You will need to restart Quicksilver and may need to add the Actions folders to your Quicksilver Catalog (Click the “plus” button and use the “File and Folder Scanner”) so that Quicksilver can find it.
UPDATE: You will also need to edit the script slightly. Open it up in Script editor or the app of your choice and change the property for the default calendar from “Home” to whatever calendar you would like the to-dos and events to be created in.
To use it, type “make ical” into Quicksilver’s first window, select “Process Text…” in the Action window and then type the text to create the to-do or event in the third pane.
For example:
This creates a to-do in my Trinity Calendar, specifies a date, adds an alarm and some notes so that I will know where to send the comments on this student’s work, and opens iCal to show me that it was created correctly:
Events are just as quick and just as clever:
This creates an event for a meeting tomorrow.
I don’t need to go back to iCal to edit the event; everything I want to add I can add via the Quicksilver action.
The text for this one adds a note about how the meeting might unfold, a location, a date, a starting time, a two hour duration, specifies which calendar to add it to and adds an alarm so that my boss won’t sack me for forgetting to meet with him.
The only downside is that you need to remember the letter for each option.
Benjamin has provided some initial documentation.
The commands can be entered in any order and they are:
t-- [title of to-do]
e-- [title of event] (use t-- or e-- to determine whether the script will create a to-do or an event. The default is a to-do. So if you just type some text (without t--) it will come out as a to-do)
d-- [start date (or due date for to-dos) in m/d/y format (or whatever your system is set to). The default is today for events (in 3 days for to-dos), +n to set that many days from today], [hour in hh:mm format, 24hr clock], [end date in m/d/y format, or +n for number of days if it is an all day event, default is same as start date], [end hour in hh:mm format, +n is number of hours from start date, default is +1], [a for an all-day event].
a-- [set an alarm (default for events is -1 hour, for to-dos 10 am on due date)
n-- [to add to notes section]
l-- [location]
c-- [calendar - default is home]
p-- [priority n,l,m,h (for to-dos only)]
u-- [URL reference]
cb-- [copy contents of clipboard to notes section - will always come after the text in the n-- section]
s-- or show-- [show the event or to-do in iCal after creation so you can check and see if it is right]
Examples
‘do this d-- a-- c--Work cb-- s-- p--h’ will create a to-do with title “do this”, with the clipboard copied to the notes, with a due date in 3 days, an alarm at 10 am and in the calendar named “Work” (if it exists, otherwise in the default which is “Home’), with a high priority and open iCal and show this to-do as soon as it has been created
‘e-- meet someone l--someone’s house n-- the directions a--2 d-- +2 17:00 +2′ will create an event “meet someone” two days from now starting at 5 pm and lasting for 2 hours with an alarm 2 hours before hand with a location “someone’s house” with “the directions” in the notes.
Get a copy of this list here.
[Big hat tip to Benjamin for sharing]
Tags: action, events, iCal, on the fly, Productivity, quicksilver, Script, to dos