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30 Most Recent RSS FeedMake The Loser Sing!!!
We love it at my house when someone gets booted from (the-campy-and-we-oh-so-love-to-hate) American Idol and then they have to sing. Make The Loser Sing! Sing, Loser! Sing!
More About PDFs
In my post yesterday, I suggested using "PDF Adder" to add PDFs to your iTunes. Duh. I neglected to mention that also in the PDF Adder collection is a PDF Service Workflow called "Add to iTunes...". When installed in your [username]/Library/PDF Services folder it appears as an option under the "PDF" drop-down in any app that supports a Print dialog. So, find a page in Safari, hit "Print" and select "Add to iTunes...". It will ask for a name, artist, and album for the PDF and then add it to iTunes.
PDF Booklet via Safari
I've been messing with Wikipedia to get info for various artists (see Search Wikipedia). But I wanted to be able to save the info, perhaps even including it in iTunes for future reference. Can do. Today I tried this trick: use Safari to go to the Wikipedia page containing info on your favorite artist. Click "Print" in Safari's File menu and then click "Save as PDF" in the PDF drop-down. Optionally, hit the "Preview" button in the Print dialog to see what the PDF will eventually look like after it's saved and then save it as a PDF.
Once the PDF has been saved, use PDF Adder to add it to iTunes. The "PDF Adder" script in that collection will let you choose an existing PDF file and add it to iTunes and provide Album and Artist tags to the new PDF so that it will be sorted with the associated Album. If your iTunes Advanced>General Preferences is set to "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" the PDF will be copied to your iTunes Music Library folder, and the original PDF can be Trashed.
As far as Wikipedia goes, it appears they use a "print.css" file that fomats the page for printing. This maintains formatting while eliminating the sidebars and such. Other sites may do so as well--like the one you're looking at now ;).
How To Write Your First AppleScript
Perceval McElhearn has posted How To Write Your First AppleScript at Macinstruct. It's a nice intro for those of you who want to get started. BTW: Perceval is the descendant of my good friend and Mac aficionado Kirk McElhearn. The nut don't fall far from the tree.
Show Entire Library Workaround
For those of you iTunes 7.1 users who are dismayed by the inability to display the entire library (as noted in this post) here's a workaround. Create a Smart Playlist whose only criteria is "Size is greater than 0" and click on Live updating. Name this new SP something obvious like "Everything" or "Full Library" or what have you. Then create a script like this, substituting the name of your SP where appropriate:
tell application "iTunes" set view of front browser window to playlist "Everything" end tell
Save it to your iTunes Scripts folder and give it a shortcut so you can easily display the SP when necessary. Thanks to Correspondent George Dick for the idea.
VoiceOver Accessible
From the comments at Chris Breen's What's new in iTunes 7.1 at Playlist:
One feature that undoubtedly escape[d] most peoples['] notice is [the] fact that iTunes is now accessible with VoiceOver. This is a major step forward for sight impaired individuals. In the past VoiceOver could not access anything within iTunes. Now virtually everything in iTunes can be navigated and controlled with VoiceOver....Kudos go to Apple for getting iTunes accessible.
No More View library playlist 1
Correspondent George Dick reports--and I have verified--that you can no longer display library playlist 1, that is, the entire iTunes library, with a script such as this:
tell application "iTunes" set view of front browser window to library playlist 1 end tell
Bummer.
NEW: Selected Tracks Played or Unplayed
Another new AppleScript track property in iTunes 7.1 is unplayed. This item does not appear in the GUI (not even in Smart Playlist criteria!?) but is accessible in the XML file, so I suspect this is something AppleTV may want to know about. In any case, you can set a selection of tracks as unplayed or played by setting the unplayed property to true or false, respectively. And that's what Selected Tracks Played or Unplayed does for a selection of tracks. Need I add for iTunes 7.1 or better only?
UPDATE: it appears the unplayed property may be specific to podcasts. However, the script will work with any track.
MORE UPDATE: do my TV Shows now have a blue dot on the far left indicating their played status?
NEW: Batch Set Tracks Sorting Tags
I don't know who doped my corn flakes yesterday, but after iTunes 7.1 came out I'd swear the dictionary didn't show the new sorting tags. Well, things have gotten back to normal here and I've got Batch Set Tracks Sorting Tags for you. This script will allow you to batch-set the new sorting tags ("Sort Name", "Sort Artist", "Sort Album Artist", "Sort Album", "Sort Composer", "Sort Show") of the selected tracks, rather than manually doing so one track at a time.
Apply Sort Field
iTunes 7.1 adds a "Apply Sort Field" submenu in the track contextual menu (Control-click a track). What's that about?
