

Flashlight – Do anything with Spotlight - akbiggs
http://flashlight.nateparrott.com/

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jrnkntl
So it's like Alfred workflows for Spotlight? This stands or falls with the
plugins that will get developed by its users; one of which Alfred is thriving
[1]

[1] [http://www.packal.org/](http://www.packal.org/)

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nateparrott
It's primarily an API on which developers can build plugins in Python (though
doing a lot of useful stuff actually requires calling out to Applescript, of
all things). There's no visual workflow-builder like in Alfred, although you
_can_ set up triggers for Automator workflows.

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killercup
Why are Flashlight plugins written in Python? (I'm asking out of curiosity; I
like it.)

JS and Ruby are bundled with OS X as well and Apple started offering some
JavaScript APIs in 10.10 for stuff that could previously only be done with
AppleScript.

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nateparrott
No particular reason. The API currently involves importing `plugin.py` files
and calling functions in them, which makes it a bit simpler, but it should be
possible to bridge with other languages. I've considered using Javascript for
Automation, but there isn't a huge amount of documentation around it, so it
hasn't been that valuable.

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nitpicker2
the example picture for translation shows "bom dia" \- thats portuguese and
not dutch

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nateparrott
That's embarrassing... I'll run off and debug that right now.

Edit: should be fixed in the next build of the translator plugin. Now to
update the screenshot...

