Controlling Other Programs

Hi, If I wanted to control say Chronosync and ABetterFinderRemame, can I get Hazel to do this? The idea is to pass syncing over to Chronosync and then have ABetterFinderRename handle bulk rename tasks. Can this be done as an easier alternative to writing scripts. If so, can you please point me to some examples.

Thanks.

Can you describe how you want to use each program? Hazel can do one-way syncs (maybe you need two way) and it also has powerful renaming features.

Oh Hell, another one. Sorry again.

I ended up solving this with the services menu from the mouse right-click button. In the end it was just so much more efficient to select the bulk files I need to change, right click, and have them show up in the opened ABetterFinderRename program. It has a number of small templates I can pre set and switch off and on to preform different task on the fly. For most of my other file renaming jobs I now have Hazel do it as part of the initial handling task, and along with it's sophisticated content search and other deep file reading and tagging features etc, it covers it all really well. Thanks for your response.

The syntax in getting Hazel to search and preform tasks on files in sub folders is still a bit of a twister though, but overall I find the the program a really invaluable piece of computer kit.

Hazel's ability to move files across my small network to another computer is great, but it would be nice if it was able to first check to see if a network folder was mounted or not, or check and if necessary do the folder mount before running a workflow rule on it. At the moment, if I have any hint of a problem with a rule not executing across the network I then have Hazel cache the files to a temp folder and automate Chronosync do the lifting. I imagine by splitting the task like this it also perseveres Hazel for preforming most of the organising routines I have setup, and continue to set up. Is it reasonable to think that having the two pieces of software do different tasks like this is much better overall for automation workflows than trying to get Hazel to do it all? I find that with all the file converting, formatting and organising I now do and along with my daytoday bill sorting and organising tasks Im asking the old laptop to do a lot.

I recently discovered the syncing feature for different computers. I haven't used it yet but it would appear to be an elegant solution to these occasional mounting problems with folders on another local computer. Ill give it a try.

Thanks again.