Automator

One of the drawbacks to owning and maintaining the Denbow Operating System, a database of all my writing, is the files are all in Markdown format (.md). This is fine, but when I want to open one up outside of the database, my writing software will render the file and display there. I don’t want that. I want and need them in a text format (.txt)¹

I’ve tried batch converting all of those files with a Python script and the script broke. Must be something in my code I didn’t write properly and could not resolve.

I tried text editors but there is no way I am going to convert 1,800 files individually- in a timely manner.

No way I am going to pay a third-party app to batch convert because it is a temporary, one and done scenario here.

So I woke up my assistant, Chet (aka ChatGPT) to see what he thinks. Chet reminded me of a built-in application on my MacBook called Automator and he even provided a list of step I could take to write the script and perform the desired actions.

Right, here we go, the moment of truth. The entire conversion process takes… a blink of the eye. While I was waiting for it to start, it actually completed converting my files. Wow.

As a bonus, converting the files to a different format actually shrank the file size. Geek-out is complete.

1. there are standard formats that should be universal or compatible with others ↩︎