I love BBEdit, and I'm sure this could be done with it and some Applescripts, 
but something like Python seems much better suited.  Very easy to write a small 
script that would cycle through a bunch of text files, extract text based on 
different criteria, and output things to new text files.

Tim

On Sat, Dec 16, 2023, at 11:47 AM, Andrew McDowell wrote:
> - notes project description
> - I have a number of notes journals, some up to 100k words, written over some 
> 30 years. Multiple topics in each file. My project is to extract and compile 
> all meaningful notes from these journals and split them out by topic into 
> separate files. Everything will be plain text, at least initially (I'll have 
> to sanitize some Word files). My thought is to use BBEdit and Apple Scripts 
> to accomplish this, as it's the only thing I've found that shows any promise 
> at all. If anyone has a better idea I'm listening.
> - I would prep the notes journal files into delimited text blocks as seen 
> below. Following that is my pseudo code attempt at a script. I'm a beginner 
> with Apple Scripts and with BBEdit. I am not a coder but willing to learn 
> enough scripting, regex, etc to do this. Help is appreciated. Let me know if 
> I can be clearer.
> - If this works I'm sure I'll find other things to automate for this or other 
> projects.
> -----
> - proposed form for 'prepped source file' (notes journal)
> - misc (unwanted) text
> - filename1 (target file for the following clip)
> - ;; (beginning delimiter)
> - heading, date
> - text body
> - ;; (end delimiter)
> - misc (unwanted) text
> - filename2
> - ;;
> - heading, date
> - text body
> - ;;
> - misc text
> - etc ... to end of file
> -----
> - proposed (pseudo code) script 
> - find 1st filename
> - index that file to front
> - select & copy delimited text (;; text ;;)
> - append selection to target file
> - find next filename in source file & repeat
> - no more filenames? 
> - done.
> -----
> - maybe only an end delimiter is needed, if filename may serve as beginning 
> delimiter?
> - If anyone offers a script, please translate it for me (I'm a dummy)
> - Or if there's a better way...
> Thanks,  Andy
> 
> 
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