Learn JavaScript with me

I have started a Python course and a JavaScript course on Udemy. I would love to to learn with others along the way of learning Drafts 5.

I think a few of us are going to be joining the forums at Automation Orchard where we can spread out a little with threads for different elements of the learning.

Ideally I’d like to spend some time just discussing the syntax to really get my head around what means what.

@RosemaryOrchard - what do you think of having a Discord room for voice chat? We could have a brief discussion about the syntax there. I tend to learn best when I have people to talk to. I’m a study group kinda guy. Discussion and debate has always got stuff into my head better than reading.

1 Like

I’ve actually got a Slack which needs setting up, Discord would be fine too! I’m just working through your challenge above (calculating the total time of a workshop) which will turn into a lesson on Automation Orchard later today :smile:.

Yes, it’s entirely possible. I’ve created a lesson based on this because while the script is pretty short, the theory behind it is fairly complex. Summing Times in a Draft to Get the Total Duration. Questions/comments are welcome!

Would be good to have weekly challenges too. I had a task I wanted to automate, so knew exactly what to the goal was. That gave me motivation to do all kinds of experiments and research around that task (learned a bunch about datejs for example).

Speaking of which…any challenge for a beginner out there to be resolved with code in Drafts? :smile:

1 Like

Complete novice myself but really want to learn, so thanks to all willing to help… what I’m looking to set up when I eventually get my head around all this, is to be able to save a piece of text from a PDF file in Drafts together with a link back to that PDF… that will make my reading routine so much more efficient and will save me a ton of time when I’m writing papers… thanks

1 Like

Getting the link to the file is highly dependent on where the file is stored and the scriptability of that location. Where do you want to save the PDFs? :slight_smile:

I guess this can be a problem… in an ideal world it would link back to the Papers app library that is stored in Dropbox. The library is a package file (not sure if that’s a problem)… but I need this linking functionality so much, I’d be willing to change all that… :blush:

Personally (and now we’re straying away from Drafts and JS terroritory rather), I store my actual documents in DevonThink, and just have the references in Zotero synced with PaperShip on iOS (I like Zotero for the API, I use it to significantly speed up my note and quote taking). Can Papers reference files stored elsewhere? You could then just store the files in Dropbox which of course has links and regular file paths.

I need a bibliography manager that links to Word (I know… but these are the ‘perks’ of academia) for when I construct my References list at the end of a paper… but I wouldn’t mind too much going a different way for note taking and (let’s say) keep Papers for only the references list - I don’t know about zotero and papership, but sound intriguing…

I do this with Ulysses, BibDesk, and a custom FileMaker Go database I built after the demise of PocketBib. I’d recommend linking to the record in your Papers database rather than the source PDF in the event you want to later add other files associated with the same publication (e.g. reading notes, clean versions etc.).

For linking to individual PDF passages in iOS the only option I know is Highlights, which hasn’t been publicly released yet (I’m in the beta). You can do it with Skim on the Mac and a custom Applescript URL handler, but that won’t ever translate to iOS. (Until the day - that may never come - when users can create custom URL schemes…).

Dfay and Rose: thanks a lot for the suggestions and trying to help… but wouldn’t know how to do the things you mention… but knowing it’s possible to do what I need makes it even more frustrating that I don’t know how… :blush: will learn though… :blush:

Zotero integrates with Word, which is how I use it a lot of the time :slight_smile:

No, Papers only uses an old iTunes style library package file that you can stole in Dropbox, but not as individual files

Yeah I’m looking into Zotero now… and papership… this might convince me to move away from my beloved Papers if I can combine all the benefits of Papers with the added functionality of note-taking with links to the individual pdf

If I were starting over I’d probably use Bookends - it seems to be the best supported and most actively developed biblio option for Mac & iOS.

This look great, thanks… I’ll look into all of these…

As a side note, apologies to the OP for derailing this thread, I think I should stop expanding on my specific needs… where could we continue this conversation to stay on topic? MPU Facebook group? Slack somewhere?

MPU group would definitely be a good fit :slight_smile:

I don’t do Facebook. :confused:

I think that response was just to Yannis re bibliography software.

I do think though that it might be helpful to close out this enormous thread & start new ones, maybe with Learn JavaScript: as a prefix for each.