I’ve made peace with mostly top-posting my email replies in the name of efficiency.
But there are often times when I want to bottom-post my reply to address a specific section.
I finally broke down a wrote a script to automate the transformation of Mail.app’s top-post format to my preferred bottom-post format.
That is, it turns this:
|
-jwr
On Nov 30, 2010, at 1:13 AM, Grumble Mumble wrote:
> we made some turkey and fixings... time for christmas cookies...
into this:
On Nov 30, 2010, at 1:13 AM, Grumble Mumble wrote:
> we made some turkey and fixings... time for christmas cookies...
|
-jwr
Where I denote the insertion point’s location with the pipe character.
The script assumes your .sig is one line and your reply message window is frontmost:
-- delay a second to give me time to release the
-- FastScript-invocation command key modifiers before
-- the script runs
delay 1
tell application "System Events"
set downArrow to 125
set upArrow to 126
set backspace to (ASCII character 8)
-- select first 4 lines
key code upArrow using command down
repeat 4 times
key code downArrow using shift down
end repeat
-- move those 4 lines to the bottom
keystroke "x" using command down
key code downArrow using command down
keystroke "v" using command down
-- delete 2 trailing lines
keystroke backspace
keystroke backspace
-- delete extra line between "On $DATE $SENDER wrote" and quote
key code upArrow using command down
key code downArrow
keystroke backspace
-- position insertion point to reply area, adding another line
key code downArrow using command down
key code upArrow
key code upArrow
keystroke (ASCII character 13)
end tell
It would be nice if I didn’t trash the clipboard’s contents when moving the top lines to the bottom, but I’m out of patience for this little project.
I’ve bound it to Command-Shift-Option-Down-Arrow using FastScripts.
Update: Apparently there’s a plugin for Mail.app for bottom posting: QuoteFix. Thanks to Caio Chassot and Peter Hosey.
