Mac: Starting PM from terminal and open a folder as contact sheet

[Sven]

Hi @ all!

I receive on a regular basis one or more ZIP-files and I need to view the contained images.

I have set up a terminal command that extracts the content of the zip(s) into a (never changing) folder.
I know how to open up PM using the terminal.
After extracting all the ZIP's it would be great to have PM opened up automatically and displaying the content of the extract folder.

Question: Is there any terminal parameter to open a folder right after launching PM?
I know that I can set the default behavior in the prefs of PM but if I start up PM the "usual" way I want to start it with no contact sheet opened up.

I am thinking of something like "open '/Applications/Photo Mechanic 5.app' /Volumes/Path/to/image/folder"

Thanks
Sven

[Kirk Baker]

Sven,

I receive on a regular basis one or more ZIP-files and I need to view the contained images.

I have set up a terminal command that extracts the content of the zip(s) into a (never changing) folder.
I know how to open up PM using the terminal.
After extracting all the ZIP's it would be great to have PM opened up automatically and displaying the content of the extract folder.

Question: Is there any terminal parameter to open a folder right after launching PM?
I know that I can set the default behavior in the prefs of PM but if I start up PM the "usual" way I want to start it with no contact sheet opened up.

I am thinking of something like "open '/Applications/Photo Mechanic 5.app' /Volumes/Path/to/image/folder"

Photo Mechanic on the Mac OS X platform does not process command line parameters.

-Kirk

[Hayo Baan]

Kirk, Sven, perhaps there is a way to interact with/fire up the browse with pm service instead?

Cheers,
Hayo

[Sven]

Hayo,

that's an option. As this is a binary I cannot find out how this is called...
That's the reason I asked here.

Sven

[Kirk Baker]

Perhaps there is a way to interact with/fire up the browse with pm service instead?

There won't be any way to use the service to do the work, but one could use a fairly simple AppleScript to do it.  It would be something like:

tell application Photo Mechanic
  open folder with posix path "your path"
end tell

I don't know if that sample would work as written (can't remember the file/folder semantics off hand.)

-Kirk

[Hayo Baan]

Perhaps there is a way to interact with/fire up the browse with pm service instead?

There won't be any way to use the service to do the work, but one could use a fairly simple AppleScript to do it.  It would be something like:

tell application Photo Mechanic
  open folder with posix path "your path"
end tell

I don't know if that sample would work as written (can't remember the file/folder semantics off hand.)

Played around a bit with applescript (haven't really used it before, so this was a good exercise) and remembered that you can use osascript to run scripts from the command line. Here's a oneliner that would work in Sven's terminal script:

osascript -e "tell application \"Photo Mechanic 5\"" -e "open \"full path to folder\"" -e "end tell"

Have fun,
Hayo

[Kirk Baker]

Hayo,

Perhaps there is a way to interact with/fire up the browse with pm service instead?

There won't be any way to use the service to do the work, but one could use a fairly simple AppleScript to do it.  It would be something like:

tell application Photo Mechanic
  open folder with posix path "your path"
end tell

I don't know if that sample would work as written (can't remember the file/folder semantics off hand.)

Played around a bit with applescript (haven't really used it before, so this was a good exercise) and remembered that you can use osascript to run scripts from the command line. Here's a oneliner that would work in Sven's terminal script:

osascript -e "tell application \"Photo Mechanic 5\"" -e "open \"full path to folder\"" -e "end tell"

That will likely work as long as the path doesn't have any non-ascii characters.  If the path has non-ascii characters the 'posix path' keywords will need to be added and accented characters will have to be represented with escaped octal byte codes.  Luckily the Terminal's path completion system will do this for you--just press Tab while you're entering the path and the Terminal will complete it for you (if there are other folders that have similar names then the Terminal will beep at you until you either enter enough characters to differentiate your chosen path or press Tab again which will cause the Terminal to show you the matches).

-Kirk

[Hayo Baan]

That will likely work as long as the path doesn't have any non-ascii characters.  If the path has non-ascii characters the 'posix path' keywords will need to be added and accented characters will have to be represented with escaped octal byte codes.  Luckily the Terminal's path completion system will do this for you--just press Tab while you're entering the path and the Terminal will complete it for you (if there are other folders that have similar names then the Terminal will beep at you until you either enter enough characters to differentiate your chosen path or press Tab again which will cause the Terminal to show you the matches).

Hmm, I just tested this on a directory with an ndash (–) and one with an o-umlaut (ö) and ampersand (&) in the name and it just worked…
Note, however that I work in a UTF-8 enabled shell (but to my knowledge that's the default on a Mac these days) but as this also works just fine in the applescript editor, I think non-ascii characters are actually not a problem (any longer?) — or am I doing something special here?

Instead of using multiple -e arguments to osascript you can also run it with a multi-line “script”:
osascript -e 'tell application "Photo Mechanic 5"
open "<full path to folder>"
end tell'
(the use of the single quote saved me from having to escape the double quotes, use what you like in your script)

[Kirk Baker]

Hayo,

That will likely work as long as the path doesn't have any non-ascii characters.  If the path has non-ascii characters the 'posix path' keywords will need to be added and accented characters will have to be represented with escaped octal byte codes.  Luckily the Terminal's path completion system will do this for you--just press Tab while you're entering the path and the Terminal will complete it for you (if there are other folders that have similar names then the Terminal will beep at you until you either enter enough characters to differentiate your chosen path or press Tab again which will cause the Terminal to show you the matches).

Hmm, I just tested this on a directory with an ndash (–) and one with an o-umlaut (ö) and ampersand (&) in the name and it just worked…
Note, however that I work in a UTF-8 enabled shell (but to my knowledge that's the default on a Mac these days) but as this also works just fine in the applescript editor, I think non-ascii characters are actually not a problem (any longer?) — or am I doing something special here?

Instead of using multiple -e arguments to osascript you can also run it with a multi-line “script”:
osascript -e 'tell application "Photo Mechanic 5"
open "<full path to folder>"
end tell'
(the use of the single quote saved me from having to escape the double quotes, use what you like in your script)

It's certainly possible that things have improved in this area.  YMMV.

-Kirk

[Hayo Baan]

Hah, I found the ability to be able to open a folder from the command-line so handy, I decided to write a little script to open the folders provided as arguments. It's very basic and only checks to see if the provided arguments are indeed files/folders.

Thank you Sven for bringing this up, now I have a new handy feature available on the command-line!

Enjoy 

#!/usr/bin/perl

use Cwd qw(abs_path);

for my $folder (@ARGV) {
  if (-d $folder || -f $folder) {
    my $script ='tell application "Photo Mechanic 5"
open "' . abs_path($folder) . '"
end tell';
    system("osascript -e '$script' 2>&1 > /dev/null");
  } else {
    print STDERR "Error: Not a file/folder $folder\n";
  }
}

[Sven]

Kirk, Hayo!

Sorry for not responding in time... I have been on a business trip for the last days...

I tried to use Hayo's latest coding but it gave me an error...
But the one before works only if PM is already up and running.

Adding one more line in front works well

Code: [Select]

open '/Applications/Photo Mechanic 5.app'
osascript -e 'tell application "Photo Mechanic 5"
open "<full path to folder>"
end tell'
@Hayo: Many thanks!

[Hayo Baan]

I tried to use Hayo's latest coding but it gave me an error...

Hmm, what kind of error? It's the exact script I'm using currently and works great for me (did you save the script as a file in a  folder in your path and did you make it executable?)

But the one before works only if PM is already up and running.

Yeah, I found this out myself too (quite logical too; how can applescript talk to an application that's not even running?), the additional line works well and have added it to my script:

Code: [Select]

#!/usr/bin/perl

use Cwd qw(abs_path);

system("open -a 'Photo Mechanic 5'");
for my $folder (@ARGV) {
  if (-d $folder || -f $folder) {
    my $script ='tell application "Photo Mechanic 5"
open "' . abs_path($folder) . '"
end tell';
    system("osascript -e '$script' 2>&1 > /dev/null");
  } else {
    print STDERR "Error: Not a file/folder $folder\n";
  }
}

@Hayo: Many thanks!

You're most welcome, besides, you gave me the idea and coupled with Kirk's input I now have a nice feature 

[Sven]

Hayo,

I tried to use Hayo's latest coding but it gave me an error...

Hmm, what kind of error? It's the exact script I'm using currently and works great for me (did you save the script as a file in a  folder in your path and did you make it executable?)

I had a few copy / move stuff and ZIP-extracts before. When using

Code: [Select]

#!/usr/bin/perl it failed.
Now I added the few lines I posted into my script and all is well

Sven