For users of iCal (and Quicksilver, of course) this can be done as follows:

Bring up Quicksilver, search and find the file you want (this doesn’t have to be a .txt file, but can be any file, folder, weblink or program), then tab to the actions and select “Get File Url”.

Now, bring up iCal and find the relevant appointment. Select the “url” field at the bottom of the info window. Then bring up Quicksilver, which should still have the file url selected, tab to the action field and select “Paste”. This pastes an url into the field that looks something like “file://localhost/Users/You/Documents/GTD/List.txt” — or whatever.

Now, all you have to do in the future is click on the “url” field in iCal, click “Go To Location” from the one-item drop-down menu and voila! You are escorted directly to that file/folder/program/ link!

• Dan

Dearest Merlin, speaking from the bottom of my nerdy heart: it’s “The Farmer and the Cowman…”

You can’t slide anything past a B’way nerd. :) Fixed a bit earlier, and many thanks.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post: “78 Trombones.”

this has made me realise that QS is broken for me. It doesn’t seem to be cataloging my text files - I can only get to them by typing the name of the enclosing folder(s). I’ve tried rescanning in the prefs but it doesn’t appear to make any difference.

Even it did work the process does seem clunky to me. Practice I suppose…

@Gary:

In the catalog section of your QS preferences, check to see if you have “include contents” checked for the folders (you may have to click the little circle i to show the drawer, I’m not on a mac right now to check). There’s an adjuster for depth of scan, too.

As far as clumsiness is concerned, it’s partly practice, partly getting QS to remember that “period-type-tab-A-spacebar-wish” appends to your wishlist.txt file.

This is a simple matter of repeating it once or twice, so it’s practice for you and quicksilver.

(If anything is clumsy about QS, it’s definitely the way you’re supposed to manage your catalog.)

@Merlin:

Thanks for this. It’s almost enough to get me to start using Entourage. If only I hadn’t seen so many “Entourage Database” corruption blowouts. :/

thanks JoshD - this wasn’t obvious earlier but you’re post made me dig deeper. For some reason the options to scan for contents were greyed out on my home folders but by adding specific folders in the additional pane I could get to the contents scanning options.

I must have missed that bit when I didn’t bother to read the manual.

Also, I don’t want to hear about Entourage database corruption thank you.

After Marketcircle came out with a plugin for Mail for DayLite thier CRM database software, I can’t understand why anyone would want to use Entourage. With DayLite, Mac OS X users now have something better than Outlook - Usable CRM. (UCReM)

Catagories? Yep. Need to make a project and a task and link it to multiple contacts? Wow, no problem. File linking? Are you kidding? Incoming email, outgoing email, project timing all tied to projects and next actions with little or no pain. Templates? Oi, do we have templates. Something even niftier is the Opportunity. How much, who, what and when is the money estimated to arrive. Show me the MONEY!!!!

And get this. You can mark task as ‘done, followup task’ and a new task is generated, linked to the first one. HOLY x#$&, batman, we got a LIVE one here.

Did I say it was multi user? Hmmf, hmmf. Well it is. I say it is time to say GOODBYE to copy paste and scripting and all this made to order crap, and pony up for a piece of this pie. Its good pie. I don’t want no quicksilver, show me the DAYLITE, GO#$%A&M!T!!!

Batteries not included.

@Gary:

Yeah, the fact that the default elements within the Quicksilver catalog are uneditable is what makes the whole thing a bit clumsy.

You can click on your home folder, then there is an option (somewhere) for “create editable copy.” Then you may tell Quicksilver to scan deeper, filter out things you don’t want, etc.

I hope when Tiger comes out that the QS catalog can take advantage of the Spotlight database instead of maintaining its own catalog of your files. Unfortunately, the people who have hands-on experience with Spotlight right now are under NDA. :/