How to tell an Automator action, that the source path of a document should also be the destination path

applescriptautomatorpath

I'm using the Automator action "Convert to PDF" from ABBYY FineReader Pro. It just does OCR recognition on a given file and saves the output to a new PDF.

It looks like this:

The issue I'm having is the output folder ("Ausgabe speichern in"). I want to tell Automator, that the full path of the input file is also the desired path of the output file (nice to have: and appends "-ocr" to the filename).

I already found out, that this could be done with the AppleScript snippet, that you see on the bottom of the screenshot. Unfortunately, the files will end up in /Applications, because the ABBYY app is in there and so the variable isn't being interpreted as I wanted it to be.

Any insights and hints will be highly appreciated.

Best Answer

Okay, I downloaded the ABBYY_FineReader_Pro_ESD.dmg file from abbyy.com and installed it, then opened it to look at the help file for use with Automator. It didn't have much information so I checked the link in the help file back at abbyy.com and while it had some additional info, it did't have what I was looking for. Namely, documentation on programmatically setting "Output filename:" to a variable, like can be done with "Save output to:" setting it to a variable.

The following is an example of an Automator workflow, saved as a Service, to take a selected Image file in Finder and convert it to and editable PDF document. You can see in the image below what settings are relevant. Note that the only option in the Variable Options for the current_path variable only has a Name: field, no Script field. And while the image is taken in OS X 10.8.5 nonetheless I tested it in macOS 10.12 and Automator doesn't show Variable Options as in your picture. (So how did you get it like that?)

I set "Save output to:" by drag and drop the current_path variable onto it and then saved the Service. It important that you don't run the Service from within Automator because if done from Automator it changes "Save output to:" the containing folder's path and doesn't reset like it does automatically when it run as a Service from Finder.

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EDIT: Workflow now works with one bug: running the workflow twice results in two copies of the control file being copied

Make a new Automator SERVICE. At the beginning, for "receives selected as input" choose "documents". Add the process "set value of variable" and make a new "destination path" variable (default variable name is "destination path"). Add the process "open finder items" to the beginning to open the control file. Add the process "run applescript" to the workflow the code is the following:

on run {input, parameters}

set LineNumber to (the line in which the path is specified in the control file)
tell application "TextEdit"
    set theVariable to paragraph LineNumber of document 1
    set thePath to POSIX path of theVariable
    set thePath to text 1 thru -2 of thePath
end tell

return thePath
end run

I don't know why this couldn't have been in the same block, but you need to add a separate AppleScript process. The code is as follows:

on run {input, parameters}

tell application "Finder"
    set theFolder to POSIX path of input & "/DEBIAN"
    try
        make new folder in folder input with properties {name:"DEBIAN"}
    end try
end tell

return theFolder
end run

Add the process "set value of variable" and make a new destination path variable (default name is "destination path 1").
Add the "get value of variable" process and get the value of the variable with the path of the input file ("destination path"). Click on "options" on this process and check "ignore this action's input".
After this, Automator has a process called "copy finder items" and this can be used to copy the input (the output of "get value of variable", which is the input file). This worked for me, hope it works for you as well. Good luck :)

Encrypting a PDF during Hazel processing

I would go with option #2.

You can use command line tools to handle the encryption. A quick google search reveals a free, for non-commercial use, tool

http://community.coherentpdf.com/

which you can call using applescript like this:

do shell script "cpdf -encrypt AES \"pass\" \"\" in.pdf -o out.pdf"

This way there are no dialog boxes to enter a password. It will encrypt them with the same one if that is ok. Less secure but more convenient.

HTH

Best Answer

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