Stack windows on top of each other
I check in on the Nisus scripting forum every once in a while to see if there are any new tricks I can pick up for managing my online documents (such as my Gods & Monsters gamebooks).
On that forum, member bjast asked “How would I go about writing a macro to automatically stack all of the open windows exactly on top of each other?” Well, it turns out that Nisus macros are designed mainly for working within documents, and its window manipulation is not very extensive. But being a well-designed Mac OS X application, it also has AppleScript support. And there are standard tools for manipulating windows in AppleScript that most applications get automatically by supporting AppleScript.
[toggle code]
-
tell application "Nisus Writer Pro"
- copy windows to windowList
- copy the bounds of the first item of windowList to windowBounds
-
repeat with aLowerWindow in the rest of windowList
- if aLowerWindow is visible then set the bounds of aLowerWindow to windowBounds
- end repeat
- end tell
This will grab the “bounds” of the focus window and set all other windows in Nisus Writer Pro to have the same bounds. They’ll all go behind the focus window (which is almost always the top-most window).
This is useful for comparing similar documents. Besides Nisus Writer Pro, it also works in AppleScript Editor, AppleWorks 6, Mail, Microsoft Word X, Safari, Smultron, and TaskPaper1.
There appears to be some sort of oddity or bug in Terminal; it sometimes works in Terminal, and sometimes it positions lower windows horizontally but not vertically.
By only setting the bounds of windows that are “visible” the script ignores hidden windows, obviously, but also docked windows. It does not ignore windows in other spaces if you use Spaces; I couldn’t find a way to distinguish them. However, it will not pull them into the current space, it will just position them in their own space to be where your document is in the current space.
To use this, you need to enable the script menu in your Mac’s menu bar. When you go to AppleScript Editor to paste the script in, check your preferences to make sure that “Show Script menu in menu bar” is checked. Then, whenever you go into an application (such as Nisus) you can choose “Open Scripts Folder” from the script menu in your menu bar. Any script you place in the application’s folder will show in that menu when you use that application.
I’m testing this on Snow Leopard
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- Gods & Monsters
- Explore!
- Nisus
- I use Nisus Writer Pro for almost all of my new documents now. It’s a lot easier to use than the other word processors I’ve tried.
- Nisus Writer Pro Macros
- The official Nisus forum for discussing scripting Nisus, using the Nisus macro language or using more complex Perl blocks.
- Stacking Windows Macro at Nisus Writer Pro Macros
- “How would I go about writing a macro to automatically stack all of the open windows exactly on top of each other?”
More Nisus
- Nisus Writer Pro 2.0
- The new Nisus is pure awesome: very easy to use, and it does everything I need.
- Automatically grab flavor text snippets in Nisus
- In Nisus, it is very easy to grab all text of a specific style, and its nearest heading. This makes it easy to make “room description cards” for handing to the players after reading them.
- Constructing encounter tables using Nisus
- Here’s a Nisus Writer macro that makes it a little easier to create encounter tables.
- Nisus HTML conversion
- New features in Nisus’s scripting language make HTML conversion almost a breeze.
- Nisus “clean HTML” macro
- The Nisus macro language is Perl; this means we can use all of Perl’s strengths as a text filter scripting language in Nisus.
More AppleScript
- Apple Mail on the Desktop with GeekTool
- Here’s a simple AppleScript to use with GeekTool to put your inbox on the Desktop.
- Getting the selected playlist in iTunes
- It took a while to figure out how to get iTunes’s selected playlist as opposed to the current playlist in AppleScript.
- Converting FileMaker to Django
- Appscript and the Django API make it easy to transfer data from Mac OS X scriptable applications into a Django-powered database.
- appscript AppleScript translator
- Those of us who like Applescript but want a solid command-line scripting environment no longer have to muddle through when using appscript. We can write in AppleScript and then translate to appscript.
- Play this song backwards in iTunes
- Using AppleScript and Quicktime, you can play any song backwards. Find out what Fred Schneider was saying on “Detour Thru Your Mind”.
- Eight more pages with the topic AppleScript, and other related pages
More Mac OS X tricks
- Command-line mail on OS X: re-alpine and Geektool
- If you do a lot of automated command-line scripts, you probably also generate a lot of mail to /var/mail. OS X only has the mail program built-in, and its GUI mail client hasn’t been able to add simple mail accounts since about OS X 10.2. Alpine can get you a better mail client, and Geektool can provide better notices.
- Leopard setuid and passwd file changes
- Leopard Server introduced two major changes to two lesser-used features: setuid root script wrappers and BSD flat file authentication.
- Media duration in Python on Mac OS X
- It turns out to be very easy to get the duration of MP3 files, MPEGs, and other media files on the OS X command line.
- SilverService and Taskpaper
- SilverService is a great little app if you commonly need to repetitiously modify text. Any application that supports services will support running selected text through command-line scripts via SilverService.
- Combining multiple PDF files into a single file
- Automator allows you to combine multiple PDF files into a single file.
- Seven more pages with the topic Mac OS X tricks, and other related pages
Given that the script is useful in a variety of applications, it would be useful to be able to place it in the Scripts folder and run it for any app; but while it will then appear in every application’s script menu, there’s no way of knowing what the current application is. “tell the current application” always tells Script Runner, not the application you called it from.