Voodoo Programming » Quicksilver

Automatically restart crashed applications

Constantinos — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 21:31:07 +0000

I love Quicksilver. If I ever sit on a machine without it, I feel handicapped, like something extremely important is missing. My major gripe with Quicksilver (and, this might just be my setup, I’m not sure), is that it likes to crash a lot. At least 2-3 times a week. And when it crashes, it’s extremely annoying because when I need to start a program up I use, well, Quicksilver!

Updated 2008-01-11: Modified script for Leopard. New script at end of post.

I’ve found a couple of different methods for relaunching Quicksilver easily or automatically. One was to keep an alias to Quicksilver on the bottom-left part of your desktop with no icon, and named as ” ” (i.e. a space). So when Quicksilver is off and you want to start it, you cmd-tab to the Finder, hit space, and cmd-o. Quick, easy, does the job, but hardly clean (or nerdy!).

The other approach which I loved was playing around with launchd (found on MacWorld and macosxhints.com). With this service we can monitor a file for modifications, and when the file is modified we can perform an action. In this case, we would monitor the file /Users/username/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Quicksilver.crash.log, and once its modified, launch Quicksilver. Clean, fully automated, but hardly simple. To make the task easier, Lingon can be used to deal with launchd. However, I was never able to make this to work, and I don’t have the patience to sit down and figure out what the problem is.

I did like the idea of monitoring Quicksilver.crash.log since that’s a direct indication that the application has crashed, but other than launchd I’m not familiar with any other automated service that can monitor for modifications in a file. I am however familiar with an automated service that monitors for modifications in a folder, courtesy of OS X, and that’s folder actions.

I can therefore build a folder action which will monitor /Users/username/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/ for changes, see what files were added, and if a ‘marked’ file was added then relaunch the relevant application and (this part is critical) delete the crash log so the script can work again. It took a couple of tries, but I think I found the most robust solution for this approach.

property restartLog : {"Quicksilver.crash.log"}
property restartID : {"daed"}
 
on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items
    repeat with i from 1 to number of items in these_items
        set fileAlias to item i of these_items as alias
        set fileInfo to info for fileAlias
        set fileName to name of fileInfo as text
        if fileName is in restartLog then
            beep
            set itm to my list_position(fileName, restartLog)
            tell application "Finder"
                open application file id (item itm of restartID)
                delete item fileAlias
            end tell
        end if
    end repeat
end adding folder items to
 
on list_position(this_item, this_list)
    repeat with i from 1 to the count of this_list
        if item i of this_list is this_item then return i
    end repeat
    return 0
end list_position

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Note that to get this to work initially, you’ll have to open that folder and delete the existing Quicksilver.crash.log, otherwise this folder action will never kick in for Quicksilver!

The critical part are the two properties at the top. The first property contains the name of the file to watch for, and the second property contains (in the same order as in the first property) the application file id for the related application. The reason for using the application file id is that this will remain constant on every system even if the application is renamed by the user.

This script can be expanded to listen for any number of applications simply by adding the two parameters for each application to these properties. To get the application file id of the application you wish to monitor, simply run this code once in Script Editor while the target application is running:

tell application "Finder" to return creator type of process "Process Name"

and watch the output.

As a side note, with this method you can chose to do any number of things instead of just relaunching the crashed application since it’s straight forward applescript. In my version I chose to ‘beep’ as well, to let me know something went wrong (and the file trash sound is also a giveaway), but you really could do anything you want here.

Leopard Update:

There have been a few changes in the way Leopard handles the crash log files, which simplifies the use of this script. Instead of using a single crash log file for each application and appending to it, Leopard simply creates a new timestamped crash log in the form Name_YYYY-MM-DD-TIME_Hostname.crash. This is easier, because we no longer have to worry about deleting the crash log, we can simply check if the newly added log starts with *Name*. Therefore, a simpler version of the above applescript (that can only work with a single app, but switching to lists shouldn’t be too hard), follows:

property restartName : "Quicksilver"
property restartID : "daed"
 
on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items
    repeat with i from 1 to number of items in these_items
        set fileAlias to item i of these_items as alias
        set fileInfo to info for fileAlias
        set fileName to name of fileInfo as text
        if fileName starts with restartName then
            beep
            tell application "Finder"
                open application file id restartID
            end tell
        end if
    end repeat
end adding folder items to

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If anyone can figure out how to use applescript instead of the shell commands and still have it work, please let me know.

iTunes scripts I can’t live without

Constantinos — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 18:04:22 +0000

I have few obsessions in my life, and one of those happens to be keeping my iTunes library in some form (and definition) of ‘order’, without having me go completely insane. This involves keeping the ID3 data as accurate as I can make it (very tedious process as I had about 100 songs named Track 3 – Unknown Artist), but that is more or less under control. What I’m working on now is rating all of my music (I’m sure every one has their own rating scheme, and there’s no need to share mine here… Just suffice to say that a 0-star rating means the song hasn’t been reviewed), and also getting as much album artwork to go with iTune’s cover flow so I can use it without looking at the same default image every time…

Doing all this manually would pretty much take up all my time, so over a period of few months (back when I first started dealing with my iTunes library), I built a few applescripts which help me manage all these tasks, and which are bound to keyboard shortcuts in Quicksilver.

Rating

I have all the standard 0-5 star rating scripts, which are bound to cmd-opt-0 through cmd-opt-5 respectively. Since I use Growl, I wanted a notification to come up for this fact, and use the album artwork (if any) as the notification icon. This is the script for the 5 star rating, where for every other (0-4 stars) script the only modification is the actual rating (commented in the script)

property emdash : «data utxt2014» as Unicode text
property black_star : «data utxt272F» as Unicode text
property white_star : «data utxt2606» as Unicode text
property dot : «data utxt00B7» as Unicode text
 
set appName to "GrowlHelperApp"
set app2Name to "iTunes"
 
tell application "System Events"
    set appIsRunning to (name of processes contains appName) and (name of processes contains app2Name)
end tell
 
if appIsRunning then
    tell application "iTunes"
        if class of current track is in {track, file track, URL track, device track, shared track, audio CD} then
            (* Increments of 20, from 0 to 100 for 0 - 5 stars *)
            set rating of current track to 100
        end if
        my notifyTrack(current track, player position, "5 Stars") (* or whatever else you want *)
    end tell
end if
 
on notifyTrack(myTrack, pos, txt)
    tell application "iTunes"
        set trkName to name of myTrack
        set trkArtist to artist of myTrack
        set trkAlbum to album of myTrack
        set trkTime to time of myTrack
        set trkRating to (rating of myTrack) / 20
        set trkPos to my getTimeString(pos)
        set artworkCount to count of artwork of myTrack
        if artworkCount > 0 then
            tell myTrack
                set trkArt to (data of artwork 1)
            end tell
        else
            set iTunesIcon to "Macintosh HD:Applications:iTunes.app:Contents:Resources:iTunes.icns"
            set trkArt to read (file iTunesIcon) as picture
        end if
        if (txt is equal to false) then
            set txt to trkName
            set trkInfo to trkPos & "/" & trkTime & " " & emdash & " " & my showStars(trkRating) & return & trkArtist & return & trkAlbum
        else
            set trkInfo to trkName & return & trkPos & "/" & trkTime & " " & emdash & " " & my showStars(trkRating) & return & trkArtist
            if (trkAlbum is not equal to "") then
                set trkInfo to trkInfo & " (" & trkAlbum & ")"
            end if
        end if
    end tell
    my showQSNotify(txt, trkArt, trkInfo)
end notifyTrack
 
on showStars(trkRating)
    set stars to ""
    repeat trkRating times
        set stars to stars & black_star
    end repeat
    repeat (5 - trkRating) times
        set stars to stars & " " & dot
    end repeat
    return stars
end showStars
 
on showQSNotify(txt, trkArt, trkInfo)
    tell application "GrowlHelperApp"
        set the allNotificationsList to {"Rating Change", "Song Skipping", "Song Info"}
        register as application ¬
            "Hotkey iTunes Notification" all notifications allNotificationsList default notifications allNotificationsList ¬
            icon of application "iTunes"
 
        if (trkArt is equal to missing value) then
            notify with name "Rating Change" title txt description trkInfo application name "Hotkey iTunes Notification"
        else
            notify with name "Rating Change" title txt description trkInfo application name "Hotkey iTunes Notification" pictImage the trkArt
        end if
    end tell
end showQSNotify
 
on showTrackInfo()
    try
        tell application "GrowlTunes"
            show current track
        end tell
    end try
end showTrackInfo
 
on getTimeString(secs)
    set no_seconds to the secs as number
    set no_minutes to no_seconds div 60
    set no_seconds to no_seconds mod 60
    if no_seconds < 10 then
        set seconds_text to "0" & (no_seconds as string)
    else
        set seconds_text to no_seconds as string
    end if
    if no_minutes ≥ 60 then
        set no_hours to no_minutes div 60
        set no_minutes to no_minutes mod 60
        if no_minutes < 10 then
            set no_minutes to "0" & (no_minutes as string)
        end if
        set minutes_text to (no_hours as string) & ":" & (no_minutes as string)
    else
        set minutes_text to no_minutes as string
    end if
 
    return minutes_text & ":" & seconds_text
end getTimeString

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Skipping

Sometimes, I find myself having a few hours of free time, where I want to just sit down and rate all my unrated songs. Instead of using the mouse to skip through every song (since I’ve already heard all of them, I just haven’t considered a rating for them), I have a script that skips a quarter of the song on each press, and places the playhead at 3 seconds from the end on the 4th activation. Useful for quickly skipping through a song.

property emdash : «data utxt2014» as Unicode text
property black_star : «data utxt272F» as Unicode text
property white_star : «data utxt2606» as Unicode text
property dot : «data utxt00B7» as Unicode text
 
set appName to "GrowlHelperApp"
set app2Name to "iTunes"
 
tell application "System Events"
    set appIsRunning to (name of processes contains appName) and (name of processes contains app2Name)
end tell
 
if appIsRunning then
    try
        tell application "iTunes"
            set myTrack to current track
            set dur to duration of myTrack
            set q1 to dur / 4
            set q2 to q1 * 2
            set q3 to q1 * 3
            set q4 to dur - 3
            set curPos to player position
            set counter to 0
            set theList to {q1, q2, q3, q4, dur}
            set pos to 0
            repeat while pos is less than or equal to curPos
                set counter to counter + 1
                set pos to item counter of theList
            end repeat
            if pos is less than 1 then set pos to 1
            set player position to pos
 
            if counter is greater than 3 then
                my notifyTrack(myTrack, player position, "Ending Song")
            else
                my notifyTrack(myTrack, player position, "Song Skip")
            end if
            (* my showTrackInfo() *)
        end tell
    end try
end if
 
on notifyTrack(myTrack, pos, txt)
    tell application "iTunes"
        set trkName to name of myTrack
        set trkArtist to artist of myTrack
        set trkAlbum to album of myTrack
        set trkTime to time of myTrack
        set trkRating to (rating of myTrack) / 20
        set trkPos to my getTimeString(pos)
        set artworkCount to count of artwork of myTrack
        if artworkCount > 0 then
            tell myTrack
                set trkArt to (data of artwork 1)
            end tell
        else
            set iTunesIcon to "Macintosh HD:Applications:iTunes.app:Contents:Resources:iTunes.icns"
            set trkArt to read (file iTunesIcon) as picture
        end if
        if (txt is equal to false) then
            set txt to trkName
            set trkInfo to trkPos & "/" & trkTime & " " & emdash & " " & my showStars(trkRating) & return & trkArtist & return & trkAlbum
        else
            set trkInfo to trkName & return & trkPos & "/" & trkTime & " " & emdash & " " & my showStars(trkRating) & return & trkArtist
            if (trkAlbum is not equal to "") then
                set trkInfo to trkInfo & " (" & trkAlbum & ")"
            end if
        end if
    end tell
    my showQSNotify(txt, trkArt, trkInfo)
end notifyTrack
 
on showStars(trkRating)
    set stars to ""
    repeat trkRating times
        set stars to stars & black_star
    end repeat
    repeat (5 - trkRating) times
        set stars to stars & " " & dot
    end repeat
    return stars
end showStars
 
on showQSNotify(txt, trkArt, trkInfo)
    tell application "GrowlHelperApp"
        set the allNotificationsList to {"Rating Change", "Song Skipping", "Song Info"}
        register as application ¬
            "Hotkey iTunes Notification" all notifications allNotificationsList default notifications allNotificationsList ¬
            icon of application "iTunes"
 
        if (trkArt is equal to missing value) then
            notify with name "Song Skipping" title txt description trkInfo application name "Hotkey iTunes Notification"
        else
            notify with name "Song Skipping" title txt description trkInfo application name "Hotkey iTunes Notification" pictImage the trkArt
        end if
    end tell
end showQSNotify
 
on showTrackInfo()
    try
        tell application "GrowlTunes"
            show current track
        end tell
    end try
end showTrackInfo
 
on getTimeString(secs)
    set no_seconds to the secs as number
    set no_minutes to no_seconds div 60
    set no_seconds to no_seconds mod 60
    if no_seconds < 10 then
        set seconds_text to "0" & (no_seconds as string)
    else
        set seconds_text to no_seconds as string
    end if
    if no_minutes ≥ 60 then
        set no_hours to no_minutes div 60
        set no_minutes to no_minutes mod 60
        if no_minutes < 10 then
            set no_minutes to "0" & (no_minutes as string)
        end if
        set minutes_text to (no_hours as string) & ":" & (no_minutes as string)
    else
        set minutes_text to no_minutes as string
    end if
 
    return minutes_text & ":" & seconds_text
end getTimeString

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This method works well with a couple of smart playlists and clever manipulation of the Party Shuffle feature. I have two smart playlists (one of them is used to filter out tv shows and movies, but not video clips). One is named “Other Video”, and has the following rules:

Match any of the following:
Video kind is Movie
Video kind is TV Show

The other is named “All Unrated”, and has the following rules:

Match all of the following:
My rating is less than 1 star
Podcast is false
Playlist is not Other Video

Finally, in Party Shuffle, at the bottom, I have Source: “All Unrated”, Display 5 recently played songs, and 15 upcoming songs. This way, even though the song I just rate will be removed from the “All Unrated” smart playlist, it won’t stop playing as it’s in the Party Shuffle playlist.

Artwork

I first ran “Get Album Artwork” in iTunes, but obviously that had a fairly limited success as a lot of my music has vital information like Album missing, and also a lot of the music I listen to isn’t even in the iTunes store. To cover the gap, I’m a fanatic GrowlTunes user, which does all the heavy work of fetching album covers (sometimes more successfully than others). GrowlTunes first looks for album artwork in the song itself, and if it doesn’t find any it then fetches it from the internet to display the Growl alert. What it does NOT do is save it with the song, but it DOES save it locally so it doesn’t have to fetch it again (in my opinion this is a very good thing as anything under a 95% success ratio you’ll want to review, and GrowlTunes is more like 70%). So what I’ve done is prepared a script that, for the current track, looks at the default GrowlTunes location, and if it finds an album cover it adds it to the song (to run it, you will need to replace your own short user name at the first line of the script):

property myUserName : "Constantinos"
property appName : "iTunes"
 
tell application "System Events" to set appIsRunning to name of processes contains appName
 
if appIsRunning then
    tell application "iTunes"
        try
            set myTrack to current track
            set trackName to name of myTrack
            if (trackName is equal to "") then
                set trackName to "Unknown Track"
            end if
            set trackArtist to artist of myTrack
            if (trackArtist is equal to "") then
                set trackArtist to "Unknown Artist"
            end if
            set trackAlbum to album of myTrack
            if (trackAlbum is equal to "") then
                set trackAlbum to "Unknown Album"
            end if
        end try
    end tell
 
    set artworkFilename to "/Users/" & myUserName & "/Library/Images/Music/" & trackArtist & "/" & trackAlbum & "/Tracks/" & trackName & "/Track.png"
    set deleteFilename to "Macintosh HD:Users:" & myUserName & ":Library:Images:Music:" & trackArtist & ":" & trackAlbum & ":Tracks:" & trackName & ":Track.png"
 
    set deleteCoverFilename to "Macintosh HD:Users:" & myUserName & ":Library:Images:Music:" & trackArtist & ":" & trackAlbum & ":Cover.png"
    set albumCoverFilename to "/Users/" & myUserName & "/Library/Images/Music/" & trackArtist & "/" & trackAlbum & "/Cover.png"
 
    set tempfile to "Macintosh HD:tmp:temporary.pict"
 
    tell application "Image Events"
        (* set artworkFile to (POSIX file artworkFilename)
        set myImage to open (artworkFile as alias) *)
        set myImage to open artworkFilename
        try
            save myImage as PICT in (file tempfile)
        on error
            try
                set deleteFilename to deleteCoverFilename
                set myImage to open albumCoverFilename
                save myImage as PICT in (file tempfile)
            on error
                return
            end try
        end try
        close myImage
    end tell
 
    tell application "iTunes"
        set myTrack to current track
        set artworkCount to count of artwork of myTrack
        set myArt to read (file tempfile) from 513 as picture
        if artworkCount > 0 then
            set data of artwork (artworkCount + 1) of current track to myArt
        else
            set data of artwork 1 of current track to myArt
        end if
    end tell
 
    tell application "Image Events"
        delete (file tempfile)
        delete (file deleteFilename)
    end tell
 
end if

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Notifications

The first two scripts use the same “Hotkey iTunes Notification” application name to register with Growl, with three types of notification: “Rating Change”, “Song Skipping” and “Song Info”. The last one simply brings up a detailed notification dialog with the current song’s playhead position, title, artist, rating, album and album art, which can all fit in the small “Smoke” style notification window. If you’re interested in that, the script follows:

property emdash : «data utxt2014» as Unicode text
property black_star : «data utxt272F» as Unicode text
property white_star : «data utxt2606» as Unicode text
property dot : «data utxt00B7» as Unicode text
 
set appName to "GrowlHelperApp"
set app2Name to "iTunes"
 
tell application "System Events"
    set appIsRunning to (name of processes contains appName) and (name of processes contains app2Name)
end tell
 
if appIsRunning then
    tell application "iTunes"
        my notifyTrack(current track, player position, false)
    end tell
end if
 
on notifyTrack(myTrack, pos, txt)
    tell application "iTunes"
        set trkName to name of myTrack
        set trkArtist to artist of myTrack
        set trkAlbum to album of myTrack
        set trkTime to time of myTrack
        set trkRating to (rating of myTrack) / 20
        set trkPos to my getTimeString(pos)
        set artworkCount to count of artwork of myTrack
        if artworkCount > 0 then
            tell myTrack
                set trkArt to (data of artwork 1)
            end tell
        else
            set iTunesIcon to "Macintosh HD:Applications:iTunes.app:Contents:Resources:iTunes.icns"
            set trkArt to read (file iTunesIcon) as picture
        end if
        if (txt is equal to false) then
            set txt to trkName
            set trkInfo to trkPos & "/" & trkTime & " " & emdash & " " & my showStars(trkRating) & return & trkArtist & return & trkAlbum
        else
            set trkInfo to trkName & return & trkPos & "/" & trkTime & " " & emdash & " " & my showStars(trkRating) & return & trkArtist
            if (trkAlbum is not equal to "") then
                set trkInfo to trkInfo & " (" & trkAlbum & ")"
            end if
        end if
    end tell
    my showQSNotify(txt, trkArt, trkInfo)
end notifyTrack
 
on showStars(trkRating)
    set stars to ""
    repeat trkRating times
        set stars to stars & black_star
    end repeat
    repeat (5 - trkRating) times
        set stars to stars & " " & dot
    end repeat
    return stars
end showStars
 
on showQSNotify(txt, trkArt, trkInfo)
    tell application "GrowlHelperApp"
        set the allNotificationsList to {"Rating Change", "Song Skipping", "Song Info"}
        register as application ¬
            "Hotkey iTunes Notification" all notifications allNotificationsList default notifications allNotificationsList ¬
            icon of application "iTunes"
 
        if (trkArt is equal to missing value) then
            notify with name "Song Info" title txt description trkInfo application name "Hotkey iTunes Notification"
        else
            notify with name "Song Info" title txt description trkInfo application name "Hotkey iTunes Notification" pictImage the trkArt
        end if
    end tell
end showQSNotify
 
on showTrackInfo()
    try
        tell application "GrowlTunes"
            show current track
        end tell
    end try
end showTrackInfo
 
on getTimeString(secs)
    set no_seconds to the secs as number
    set no_minutes to no_seconds div 60
    set no_seconds to no_seconds mod 60
    if no_seconds < 10 then
        set seconds_text to "0" & (no_seconds as string)
    else
        set seconds_text to no_seconds as string
    end if
    if no_minutes ≥ 60 then
        set no_hours to no_minutes div 60
        set no_minutes to no_minutes mod 60
        if no_minutes < 10 then
            set no_minutes to "0" & (no_minutes as string)
        end if
        set minutes_text to (no_hours as string) & ":" & (no_minutes as string)
    else
        set minutes_text to no_minutes as string
    end if
 
    return minutes_text & ":" & seconds_text
end getTimeString

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That’s pretty much it… Enjoy!