Open in Favorite Editor
I was trying to solve a problem the last 30 minutes (excluding the 30 minutes it took me to write this article):
- I use preview apps. They open a specific file quickly, but aren’t that good at editing. Mainly Preview, QuickLook, TextEdit, ….
- I also use apps that are capable of editing something really really well, e.g. Vim or Acorn. They don’t open as quickly, but editing-wise they are unbeatable compared to their “previewers”.
That’s why I decided to create a script that gives me best of both worlds. I leave their default association to their previewers, but with a shortcut I can open them in my favorite editor.
The script can be extended to support more “file types”, as I call them, to support, e.g. movies, HTML files, PDF’s, etc.
You can mix a Finder selection with images, and text by the way. I often want to open all files in a project for editing, so I’m taking care of this problem as well. You can even put multiple “editors” in there, which means you can open a, e.g., text file in a Markdown previewer and your editor of choice.
I’m using Keyboard Maestro for this, but you might be using Alfred, LaunchBar, FastScripts, whatever. “Open in Favorite Editor” should work fine for all of these.
I’ve included “Open in Favorite Editor” in my LaunchBar Scripts repository (which mostly contains scripts that run flawlessly in Alfred, Keyboard Maestro, yadda yadda). You can download all scripts here or just open "Open in Favorite Editor" here.