Moving items to Categories fast July 18, 2009

Many project, ideas and todo’s clash constantly as it happens to everybody else, so a nice scheme of what I’m about to post is almost impossible. Previously I talked about the subject on moving trough categories in painless matter. Today, I’ve decided to post this script to move items to different categories by using the keyboard. I’ve used several macro programs before, but lately I’m enjoying mostly Autohotkey.

Before going to the scritp I would recommended modifying the names of you categories by using a  label. Use only two letters (not numbers) for identifying your categories (if you have even less then maybe even one character would suffice).  The two letter combination is for accessing your categories list faster, and numbers will be used for the direct shortcut for moving items trough categories. Only exception is label for “desktop” category (I want to have it listed at top always). If I use numbers for the label of the categories my memory gets mixed up.

Category name examples:

lm. Learning and Memory (a)
mb. Money and Bussiness (a)
ne. Neuroscience (b)
me. Medicine (b)
rp. Residency pending (a)
01. Desktop (exception) almost everything goes into my collection trough the desktop
ta. Trash (b) – when in doubt of deleting an item, it goes to this category (recycler should be on SuperMemo).

Personal rules for label prefix.
(a) Categories with phrase names get first letters from first two representative words
(b) Categories with single word names get the first letter plus the first vocal

By using a combination of scripts you have access to 9 favorite categories (numbers 1 – 9), 0 is used as desktop shortcut. In order to move items to non-favorite categories a  dot shortcut is used, plus the first label for the category (ea. the two letter combination).

Script examples:

;*******************************************
;MOVING TROUGH CATEGORIES - SUPERMEMO
;*******************************************
;.[#!.] Opens category dropdown menu
;*******************************************
#!.::
#!NumpadDot::
Sleep, 100
Send, {CTRLDOWN}{SHIFTDOWN}p{SHIFTUP}{CTRLUP}
Send, {ALTDOWN}c{ALTUP}{DEL}
return

;.[#!0] Moves item to category with name starting with "01." (desktop)
;*******************************************
#!0::
#!Numpad0::
Send {CTRLDOWN}{SHIFTDOWN}p{SHIFTUP}{CTRLUP}{ALTDOWN}c{ALTUP}01.{ENTER}{ENTER}
return
;.[#!9] Moves item to category with name starting with "rp." (residency pending)
;*******************************************
#!9::
#!Numpad9::
Send {CTRLDOWN}{SHIFTDOWN}p{SHIFTUP}{CTRLUP}{ALTDOWN}c{ALTUP}rp.{ENTER}{ENTER}
return

;Moves item to category with name starting with "ta." (trash)
;*******************************************
#+Del::
Send {CTRLDOWN}{SHIFTDOWN}p{SHIFTUP}{CTRLUP}{ALTDOWN}c{ALTUP}ta.{ENTER}{ENTER}
return

Superscript and Subscript keyboard shortcut with Autohotkey script July 14, 2009

Currently there are many scripts to be posted but as some of you would probably benefit here I start posting some of my Autohotkey scripts for supermemo.

If you don’t currently use Autohotkey I’lll post some explanation of how to load it. But for starters is pretty easy, just copy the following text in a text file with the extension ahk after installing autohotkey and the keyboard shortcuts ctrl+win+p= superscript, and ctrl+win+b=subscript will be available.

;****************************
;.[#^p] #SuperScript: Change current selectec text to superscript
;*****************************
#^p::
Send, ^c
clipboard = <SUP>%clipboard%</SUP>
Send, {AppsKey}xp
return

;****************************
;.[#^p] #SubScript: Change current selectec text to subscript
;*****************************
#^b::
Send, ^c
clipboard = <SUB>%clipboard%</SUB>
Send, {AppsKey}xp
return

Thanks for the idea yahoo group. I’m planning on using this sort of scripts for highligthing in different colours (some thing I think is missing in SuperMemo).

Changing categories fast: Hacking shortcuts with AutoHotKey June 22, 2009

I been busy lately. Trying out and learning the use of AutoHotKey. AutoHotKey can do those repetitive task you don’t like in SuperMemo (or any other application). So far I’ve implement the following shortcuts:

win+alt+0: Move item to any category (a two key system finds a category fast enough).
win+alt+9: Move item to default category
win+alt+1: Move item to desktop category (if some previous topic must be processed by GTD).
win+shit+del: Move item to trash category (a kind of recycler category).

I work with a desktop category where every new item goes first, either a extract or item (Q&A). Default category in this case is where most of my items are transfered to from de desktop category (is my GTD system inbox). Any category option, opens up the dialog to change category and then you can type a two letter combination and double enter to move to any category.

Testing in debug is always my mode so I tested the savings produce on this repetitive task vs the time it took to learn how to use this app. I wen’t on an changed 100 items to different categories with each shortcut, here are the results.

Supermemo Default: 374 seconds (savings = 0 sec.)
Ctrl+alt+0: 178 seconds (savings = 3 min 16″)
Ctrl+alt+1: 115 seconds (savings = 4 min 9″)
Ctrl+alt+9: 128 seconds (savings = 4 min 6″.)

Not to much maybe but on 10,000 items that’s that would take between 6-7.5 Hours of pure nonstop fast typing.

I’m using AutoHotKey to fix some bugs in supermemo with ease, like incorrect titles, or simply cleaning unwanted code from an item. maybe I’ll explain in detail in other post.

By the way supermemo uses to many keyboard shorcuts (can’t believe I think like this being a keyboard addict, but supermemo does it), this leaves you with few to choose from. What I have done is replace seldom shorcuts with AutoHotKey shortcuts in order to do usefull stuff in SuperMemo.

If you implement AutoHotKey, share you scripts:

(Update: There is a more complete explanation of the scripts now)