macOS Delete SRT subtitles markup

[tcwdoggy]

Hi,

I want to write a simple apple script that can delete the italics markup "<i>" in SRT files. But the "<" and ">" are causing problem. What is the correct format to enter in this case?

This is what I have.
Thanks.

tell application "TextEdit"
set every word of front document where it is "<i>" to ""
end tell

 

[cruisin]

< and > have special meanings for computers, so you might have to "escape" it so that it is used as text, usually by using the "\" character.

But why not use the find and replace option in the text editor of your choice?

 

[tcwdoggy]

< and > have special meanings for computers, so you might have to "escape" it so that it is used as text, usually by using the "\" character.

But why not use the find and replace option in the text editor of your choice?

Cause this is just the beginning of something more. I did tried your suggestion previously though, don't think it work at all.

Thanks anyway.

 

[TheTruth101]

There is this software that runs on PC, is free and it does wonders. We use it for closed captioning. The best. It may work for you: http://www.nikse.dk/subtitleedit/

 

[Childs]

This is kinda late, and I dont really know AppleScript, but using sed:

sed -e 's/<[^>]*>//g' tmp.srt

So you can probably do something like this in AppleScript:

do shell script "sed -e 's/<[^>]*>//g' tmp.srt > tmp.notags.srt"

Or in Python:

import re, os, shutil

srt_file = os.path.expanduser('~/tmp/sample.srt')
shutil.copy(srt_file, srt_file+'.orig')

with open(srt_file, 'r+b') as fp:
    data = fp.read()
    fp.seek(0)
    fp.write(re.sub('<[^>]*>', '', data))
    fp.truncate()

print 'Finished.'

 

[Mark FX]

You can use AppleScript to seperate out the "<i>" and "</i>" tags found in SRT files, but would involve using AppleScript repeat loops on every paragraph or word in the TextEdit documents text, which would be very slow.

So the above shell techniques would be a better option.

But if your determined to use AppleScript, then the better option would be to use the Cocoa Framework and Classes for such a task.

So use this example text below to practice with, in a new TextEdit document, before letting this example code loose on your desired files, to make sure it's acting as desired.

original text

<i>Hello</i> <i>World</i> <i>!</i>
<i>Hello</i> <i>Again</i> <i>World</i> <i>!</i>
<i>Hello</i> <i>Yet</i> <i>Again</i> <i>World</i> <i>!</i>

AppleScript code

use AppleScript version "2.5"
use scripting additions

use framework "Foundation"

tell application "TextEdit"
    set documentText to (text of front document) as Unicode text
end tell

set documentString to current application's NSString's stringWithString:(documentText)

set documentString to documentString's stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:("<i>") withString:("")

set documentText to (documentString's stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:("</i>") withString:("")) as Unicode text

tell application "TextEdit"
    set text of front document to documentText
end tell

You have'nt stated which version of Mac OS your using, so the above example assumes your using OSX 10.10 or later.

And you should end up with this text below in your TextEdit document.

Hello World !
Hello Again World !
Hello Yet Again World !

I have NOT included any error checking in the above AppleScript code, which I would encourage you to do in any coding.
And you should of course check that the TextEdit application is running before trying to instruct it with AppleScript tell blocks, otherwise you will get AppleScript runtime errors.
So please only see this code as a quick and dirty proof of concept, and does NOT represent a finished or complete AppleScript application.

Hope this helps

Regards Mark