Part of Nobumi Iyanaga's website. n-iyanag@ppp.bekkoame.ne.jp. 5/1/06.

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Perl macros for Nisus Writer Express 2.7x

Nisus Writer Express is becoming better and better with its upgrades. With the version 2.7, we can now have sub-menus in the Macro menu, and we can assign shortcuts with two keys pressed in a sequence. These improvements stimulate the incentive to write new macros.

Here is a pair of macros that can be used when you want to write Perl macros or scripts in Nisus Writer Express. I first wrote these scripts for Jedit X (you will find them at Jedit X Library -- download directly from this link); I adapted two of them for Nisus Writer Express.

Where to install the scripts

I would recommend to put them in a new folder in your Nisus Writer Express Macros folder (/Users/[your_account]/Library/Application Support/Nisus Writer/Macros/): create a new folder named "Perl" in that folder, and put the two AppleScript scripts in that folder.

The two scripts are:

1. check_syntax.scpt
2. execute_frontScript_on_rearDoc.scpt

How to use the scripts

check_syntax.scpt

Open a new window, and write any Perl script in it. The script must begin with the "shebang" line, that is:
#!/some_path/perl [some_commandline_switch]
where, usually, /[some_path] is /usr/bin.

You would write for example:

#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Hello World!\n";

Then choose Macro > Perl > check_syntax: you will get a dialog saying:

Syntax OK

Now, if you write:

#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Hello World!\n';

Then, you will get the following reply:

Can't find string terminator '"' anywhere before EOF at junk_1.pl line 2.

The line number indicated in the error message may not be very useful, since NWE cannot display line numbers; but at least, the Syntax OK reply can be useful...

If you write:

#!/usr/bin/abc
print "Hello World!\n';

You will get this error message:

The text of the front document does not seem to be a perl script (add #! line...).

execute_frontScript_on_rearDoc.scpt

Suppose that you have a document of addresses, in which you have for example:

Mr/Mrs/Ms First_name Familly_name
street address
City
tel. 000-1234-5678

Etc... And you would like to get the telephone number of each person. In such a case,
Open a new window, and write the following script:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use utf8;
binmode (STDIN, ":utf8");
binmode (STDOUT, ":utf8");

while (<>) {
	print if /^M[rs]+s/;
	print $_, "\n" if /^tel.s[0-9-]+/;
}

Now, be sure that you have your address document behind your Perl script, and choose Macro > Perl > execute_frontScript_on_rearDoc: you will get a new document where you will have the following result:

Mr First_name Familly_name
tel. 000-1234-5678

Mrs First_name Familly_name
tel. 000-1234-5678

Ms First_name Familly_name
tel. 000-1234-5678

Your script must have the "shebang" line:
#!/some_path/perl [some_commandline_switch]

It must have also the three lines:

use utf8;
binmode (STDIN, ":utf8");
binmode (STDOUT, ":utf8");

If you forget to put one of these lines, you will get the following warning:

You should add <use utf8;> in your script...
etc.

As the code above shows, the text of the document behind the script window is passed to the script as "STDIN" (standard input), i.e., in Perl notation, "<>", or "<STDIN>".

Note also that the result text will have no style formatting.

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How these scripts work

The two AppleScript scripts get the text of the frontmost document (and that of the document of the rear window), and write it in a text file (or two text files) in the folder /private/var/tmp/folders.501/TemporaryItems/.

Each Perl script will be named junk.pl, junk_1.pl, junk_2.pl, etc., and each text file will be named junk.txt, junk_1.txt, junk_2.txt, etc.

So, when you restart the machine, you will have in your Trash a folder named "Recovered Items", in which you will find these "junk" files (at least on OS 10.4 and later).

The check_syntax script checks the syntax of the written junk.pl file with the command:
perl -c junk.pl

And the script execute_frontScript_on_rearDoc will execute the "junk.pl" on the "junk.txt" with the following command:
perl junk.pl < junk.txt
The result is output to the Standard Output by the print...; command, which will be displayed in a new window in Nisus Writer Express.

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Package and download

The package will contain:

Perl/
	check_syntax.scpt
	execute_frontScript_on_rearDoc.scpt
ReadMe.rtf	This file.

Please download the package from this link (86K to download).

Please send me your feedback, bug reports or feature requests.

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This page was last built with Frontier on a Macintosh on Mon, May 1, 2006 at 1:32:24 PM. Thanks for checking it out! Nobumi Iyanaga