THOUGHTASYLUM ACTION GROUP INSTRUCTIONS

Welcome to the ThoughtAsylum Action Group. It may well be a little different to other action groups that you may have used, and probably more to it than you may be used , so please do read these instructions.

The ThoughtAsylum Action Group is Now a Suite of Action Groups (TAAGS)

The ThoughtAsylum action group started as an all-encompassing action group, but it quickly started encroaching on some technical limits in the Apple sync mechanism used by Drafts. As of September 2020, the single original action group has now been split into multiple action groups to mitigate this and to allow greater scope for future growth. The down side is, that this means that users now have to potentially keep an eye on multiple action groups to keep them up to date, and the update workflow for the suite is that much more complicated than updating a single library.

1. ThoughtAsylum

The core action group is this one. It contains the all importance set-up action as well as a number of information and helper actions utilised by other actions in other ThoughtAsylum action groups. You must install and run the set-up action for this action group to use any of the other action groups.

2. ThoughtAsylum - Writing

The writing action group contains actions that are designed to help you with writing content in Drafts. They allow you to insert, modify and remove content in a wide variety of ways. This action group should be useful to everyone who uses Drafts.

Download the Writing Action Group.

3. ThoughtAsylum - Management

The management action group contains actions for working with drafts at the level above the content. Working with meta data, navigating drafts, working with workspaces. This action group should be useful to everyone who uses Drafts.

Download the Management Action Group.

4. ThoughtAsylum - Export/Import/Share

The export/import/share action group is the next level along from draft management. It deals with getting draft related data into and out of Drafts. This can be via the clipboard, share sheet, files, etc. This action group should be useful to everyone who uses Drafts.

Download the Export/Import/Share Action Group.

5. ThoughtAsylum - Tasks & Lists

The tasks and lists action group contains actions for working with lists including tasks in check lists. It can be thought of as a list specific extension to the writing action group. This action group should be useful to drafts users who use lists.

Download the Tasks & Lists Action Group.

6. ThoughtAsylum - Power User

The power user action group contains actions that are of use to Drafts users who are interested in writing their own scripting actions, and those who are interested in working with more advanced add-on features like custom meta data, or examining statistical information about the content and actions they have in drafts.

Download the Power User Action Group.

7. ThoughtAsylum - Trove

The trove action group is a place to find a variety of other useful actions. These include actions for managing and working with the Drafts user interface for example. This action group is likely to be useful to everyone who uses Drafts.

Download the Trove Action Group.

Tips for Using the Action Groups

You may have noticed that every action in the action groups begins with “TAD-”. Not exactly user friendly, but it is on purpose so that you can see what is part of the ThoughtAsylum groups when you are scanning and searching. You may also notice that not a single action in the groups has a keyboard shortcut associated with it. Again, this is entirely on purpose.

The aim of these groups is to be reference groups. The suggestion is that you leave these groups entirely untouched. While you can copy out actions to other groups, I would recommend using the include action instead. That way you can maintain use a single source and potentially call it from multiple other action groups, including keyboard action bars. Then you can assign your own keyboard shortcuts and icons, and should you download an update to this action group in the future (and we do try and update as often as we can), you’ll be able to take advantage of any improvements without losing any of your personalised configuration.

Of course, if you want to modify an action to create your own tailored version, that’s exactly when you should copy one of these actions, and then we’d recommend referencing that action in the same way.

From Quick and Simple to Complex and Powerful Actions

Not every action is necessarily intended to be practically functional per se, there are some actions that are intended more as examples for the TADpoLe library on which the groups are primarily built. They are also there to help people who are looking for example actions to learn from to have a broad selection in it such that if you want to do something, you can most likely use one of the actions as a starting point. However, the vast majority of the included are highly practical and can be utilised more actively.

There are many very quick to build, very simple actions in the Action Groups, and probably many more complicated ones - and you can use either the power and complexity of the functionality or the scripting behind it; they don’t always equate directly. The key thing to know is that some of the power and complexity that some of these actions offer is probably more than is reasonable to explain here, and there could well be others added in the future. Because of this, we’ll be publishing a couple of things over on thoughtasylum.com that are intended to help you. If you are having trouble, it will be worth checking out. If you still don’t find anything, do reach out via the Drafts forums, and someone, maybe me, will hopefully be able to help.

Actions Listing

While every action should have a description of some sort, it can be difficult to read though all of them given there are hundreds of actions available in the ThoughtAsylum action groups. Therefore we’re publishing a set of information about the actions that you can browse through more easily; and yes, you guessed it, that content is generated utilising functions within the TADpoLe library.

ThoughtAsylum Action Group Information Page

Deeper Dives

Some actions require configuration or a deeper understanding of their use and purpose than can be covered in the brief description within an action. In such cases we will be publishing deeper dives over on thoughtasylum.com to cover these.

The number of these deep dives available will vary depending upon when you are reading this. More will be added over time.

Read TADpoLe posts on ThoughtAsylum.com.

TADpoLe Library

The main JavaScript library this action group is built on, and many of the actions are examples for is the TADpoLe library. This is the ThoughtAsylum Drafts Library, and contains hundreds of functions and features that you may find useful in developing your own actions.

The library is documented in the same style as Drafts’s own Scripting, and you can access both online via the following links.

Prior to the February 2021 release, updating this library has been a manually triggered task. To make things easier for people, actions will now check to see if an update of the library is required when run. While we have tried to make the check as efficient as possible, it will slow actions down a little bit with the additional checks; but based on feedback this is something to trial.

You can toggle the automated checking on and off for a particular device via the TAD-Toggle Auto Library Update (in the core action group), and the TAD-Setup/Refresh action (in the core action group) continues to force a refresh of the library as before.

Change Log

A change log of the action group changes is also available.

ThoughtAsylum Action Group Change Log

Keywords

The following keywords are used to help Drafts users, like you, find this action group in the action directory as the action names for groups are not included in the search.

Action, Action, AES, Alphabetic, Analyse, Append, Archive, Array, Audio, Back, Back-Link, Back Link, Base64, Bear, Beautify, Blank, Bold, Browser, Bullet, Camel, Capital, Capitalise, Capitalize, Character, Check, Checkbox, Checkboxes, Checked, Clipboard, Coding, Comma Separated, Compress, Copy, Count, Counter, Create, Created, Cross, Cross-Link, Cross Link, Crypto, Cryptographic, CSV, Cursor, Cut, Date, Datestamp, Decode, Decrypt, Deduplicate, Definition, Delete, Delimit, Diagram, Dictate, Dictionary, Discourse, Duplicate, Editing, Embed, Encode, Encrypt, End, Error, Example, Expand, Export, Extend, External, Fetch, File, Filename, Filepath, Flowchart, Font, Font Awesome, Format, Git, GitHub, Gist, Google, Group, Heading, Highlight, HTML, Import, Indent, Info, Information, Insert, IP, Italic, JavaScript, Jump, Kebab, Key, Keys, Lat/Lon, Latitude, Leading, Left, Line, Lines, Link, List, Load, Location, Log, Logging, Longitude, Lower, Markdown, Marked, Marked2, Marker, MediaWiki, Menu, Mermaid, Meta, Mistype, Mode, Modified, Move, MP3, MultiMarkdown, Navigation, New, Next, Number, Numeric, Open, Outdent, Paragraph, Paste, Pastebin, Path, Persistent, Plain, Populate, Prefix, Prepend, Preview, Previous, Prime, Quick, Random, Reading, Recent, Redo, Reduce, Remove, Report, Reverse, Right, Roman Numeral, ROT13, Safari, Screaming, Scripting, Search, Section, Select, Selection, Sentence, Share, Shortcut, Shrink, Signature, Simple, Snake, Sort, Sound, Split, Start, Stats, Strikethrough, Suffix, Synonym, Syntax, Tab, Tag, Tags, Taskpaper, Template, Text, Thesaurus, Time, Timestamp, Title, Today, Toggle, Trailing, Trash, Trim, Typewriter, Uncheck, Unchecked, Undo, Upper, URL, UUID, Variable, Version, Warning, Week, Whitespace, Wiki, Word, Workspace, Wrap, Yesterday

Legal Stuff & Coffee

This action group and the library are of course entirely free for you to use, though full details of licensing, including the licensing for some referenced code libraries and code are available on the TADpoLe Library site.

However, some people do like to give back, and so if you do find this action group and the TADpoLe library useful, you can donate to my coffee fund. I enjoy working when I can from coffee shops where I live (York, UK), and many of my best ideas and results have likely been fuelled by caffeine.

Donate a coffee