Automated renaming of tags?

[tonywatkins]

Yes, that’s what I had first hoped to do but found I couldn’t. Hence why I’m now thinking use groups (which also tag) rather than just tags.

I have been somewhat confused by tags, tag groups, group tags, and groups. It would help if tags and group tags were in different colours. I finally spotted there are a couple of additional lines at the right-hand side of a group tag in the tag bar.

[BLUEFROG]

Groups and group tags are differentiated by icons and yes, the token in the Tags bar / Tags fields show as stacked tokens.

And classification doesn’t consider tags.

[DTLow]

@tonywatkins

Ah, so using aliases won’t do much to help me automate this then.

My testing showed the alias process works for your purpose
Test it yourself

[tonywatkins]

Will do. I think switching to groups (with tags enabled) and aliases will get me to the process I’m hoping for.

[pete31]

@tonywatkins

What I was hoping to do was take a file from my global inbox, say with a tag of ‘epistemology’ to use my previous example and then have that tag become ‘121 epistemology’ when moving it into my research db, as then I could automate it going into the right group.

In the last half an hour it’s occurred to me that I might be better not excluding groups from tagging (as I have been doing). Then I could have groups (+group tags) for the Dewey classifications I need (i.e have a group ‘121 epistemology’ rather than just a tag). Then I think I could use the classify function to get this new file into the relevant group, picking up the appropriate ‘121 epistemology’ tag as a consequence. Then I could simply ignore the old tags, which will all begin with letters rather than digits. I could probably also create a simple script to remove these old tags periodically if they get in the way.

The whole process of

• assigning the tag you want
• removing the old tag

is already automated if you add the old tag‘s name as an alias to the „new“ tag (the tag that you want to use).

It’s really that simple .

If you then still need an additional group for each tag then that would be possible by replicating each tag‘s children into a group. This would be much easier than using classify just to assign a tag.

In case you need help with an AppleScript that adds aliases to your tags let me know.

[tonywatkins]

Thanks so much, Pete. I really appreciate your assistance.

@pete31

If you then still need an additional group for each tag then that would be possible by replicating each tag‘s children into a group. This would be much easier than using classify just to assign a tag.

How does one ‘replicate each tag’s children into a group’? Do you mean a smart group or something else?

[tonywatkins]

Could someone confirm what the correct separator is for a list of aliases, please, or if it matters? The documentation states semicolons (p.110), but when merging tags they are separated by commas. Both seem to work, but I don’t want to discover that by choosing one rather than another that I cause problems in the future.

[BLUEFROG]

When I merged two tags with aliases - one semicolon-separated, the other comma-separated - both were preserved.

@cgrunenberg would have to comment on this behavior.

[cgrunenberg]

Both comma and semicolons are supported.

[tonywatkins]

Thanks for the clarification.

[pete31]

@tonywatkins

How does one ‘replicate each tag’s children into a group’? Do you mean a smart group or something else?

Thought of a Smart Rule script that gets all children of a tag and replicates them into a regular group (or moves them from e.g. the inbox into a regular group).

[tonywatkins]

Excellent. Thanks again!

[imanuel]

hey Tony @tonywatkins : did you figure out a good process for that? would you share? I would be interested in that very much… thx