For more details, read on...

Technorati Tags: littleknown, signatureprofiler

•  {script:'/Path/to/my/script.scpt'}

As usual, you can enter this entire text yourself without using the menu, but it makes it a little easier. You should use some sort of delimiters around the path though, where the open and close are the same. Any of these characters can be used (as long as the same character is not in the path) [\"'|!@#$%^&*-=_+,.?/\ ]. In addition, any formatting applied to the placeholder will be applied to the resulting string as well.

You can use any scripting language that you like. If the file is a .scpt or .applescript file, then it will be interpreted and run as an applescript. In all other cases the script will be run as an executable shell file, so you must ensure that it can be run this way or you will get errors in your results. So you can easily use perl, shell, or even ruby if you wish.

As mentioned above, any of the normal placeholders that you can use in signatures can be put inside the script and they should be replaced as normal. The only exception to this is a script placeholder for obvious problems of recursion.

The results of the script are always inserted as html, so you should use </br> as line breaks. A simple carriage return will not do anything. But this also gives you the ability to control the output pretty well.

To all those who contributed this idea, thanks very much. Let me know what you think and if there are parts that are not implemented how you would like.

Technorati Tags: littleknown, signatureprofiler

Ok, so how does a user create and add her quotation list file? Simple. In the iTunes & Quotes (previously just iTunes) tab in the SignatureProfiler preferences pane, the bottom half allows you to designate the file that you would like to use as your quote list file. One the file has been chosen, it will display the quotations in the bottom table, but you cannot yet edit them here. They are just for display to so that you can verify that it actually read the file correctly.

So then, now you just have to create a text file. Each quotation should be on a single line, but it can also have an author and a citation or source to go along with it. The author and citation should be separated from the quote by a semi- colon (:). If your quotation, author or citation has a semi- colon within it you must delimit that piece with some kind of character from this list ( \"'|!@#$%^&*-=_+,.?/\ ) (the last one is a space!). You can always use these characters for delimiters, but you must if your text has a semi- colon.

Create you file as a simple text file in program like TextEdit or BBEdit and save it wherever you like. Then from with the above mentioned iTunes & Quotes tab of the preferences pane, select that file.

So, here are a couple of examples of what some lines from this file might look like. These examples are from the same file as you see in the image above. (Note that each of these is on a single line in the text file)

• Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand, ignorance and prejudice and fear walk hand in hand:Neil Peart:Witch Hunt
• "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you'll get"::Forrest Gump
• Where's the beef!?
• Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness::Declaration of Independence
  |Are we 'green'?|:Ruby Rhod:The 5th Element

So now how can this information be used inside of a signature? Three new placeholders have been added, which you can also access from the placeholder menu in the Signature's preference pane. They are:

• {random.quote}
• {random.quote.author}
• {random.quote.citation}

The first will be replaced by the actual quotation, the second, by the author, if one was indicated for that quote and the last is the citation or source, also if one was indicated. So if you have a signature that looks like this:

You would get these three as possible outcomes from the file listed above:

One thing to note in the last example, the text " - in " is placed into the signature as well, despite not having any author or citation. This is because it is in the actual signature above. So you might want to consider this when creating your signature and signature file. If the signature itself was something like this instead:

• {random.quote} {random.quote.author} {random.quote.citation}

Then I could put the relevant text into the file list, maybe like this:

• '"Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand, ignorance and prejudice and fear walk hand in hand"':by Neil Peart:from the song <i>Witch Hunt</i>
• |"Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you'll get"|::in Forrest Gump
• Where's the beef!?
• Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness::'- Declaration of Independence'
  |Are we 'green'?|:Ruby Rhod:The 5th Element

When you do this though, be sure to use some delimiters to ensure that the full string is interpreted correctly. For example since the dash (-) is normally seen as a delimiter, if you start a citation or author with that, you should use some other delimiter character around the entire part.

I hope that this was helpful.

Anyway, below the fold are some examples of how these signatures can be used and a couple of gotchas to look out for and avoid.

• {itunes.playing.song}
• {itunes.playing.album}
• {itunes.playing.artist}

will be replaced with empty strings if iTunes is stopped or not running. This is why the {itunes.display.info} placeholder exists. This allows you to choose four different, but complete signatures to use for each of the states of iTunes (the four states are "Playing", "Paused", "Stopped" and "Not Loaded". This way you can decide that for all states but playing, you'll have "None" as the signature for the info placeholder. Then when iTunes is in the three other states that placeholder will be replaced with an empty string.

But it also let's you designate more meaningful signatures for each of the states if you wish. Say, we create four signatures like these:

   

   

In the iTunes tab of SignatureProfiler's preference pane, we'll set the different signatures for the four states. Assume that we'll assign the top-left signature, to the iTunes State of "Playing", the top-right to "Paused", the bottom-left to "Stopped" and the bottom-right to "Not Loaded". To set these, choose the state you want to set from the top menu and then pick the signature that you would have created in the bottom menu.

Then once you compose a message and select a signature that uses the {itunes.display.info} placeholder, you'll get the correct version of the iTunes signature displaying in your signature. Here are what my four look like.

Cool, huh?