[CEO]

Dear good people of the MacNN forms,

I did a search and didn't find this posted before so... I have a compiled apple script that I would like to turn into a menulet. How do I go about doing this?

[Scandalous Ion Cannon]

I think Apple puts quite a bit of effort into not allowing people to do this.

[TETENAL]

/Applications/AppleScript Utility

->Show Script Menu in menu bar
->Open script folder

And then drop your script into the script folder.

[brokenjago]

err

For those who are a little un-versed with AppleScript, what's a menulet?

[bkb]

Originally Posted by TETENAL

/Applications/AppleScript Utility

->Show Script Menu in menu bar
->Open script folder

And then drop your script into the script folder.

Er... I think he means creating a new menulet entirely, rather than dropping the script into the Scripts menulets.

[bkb]

Originally Posted by brokenjago

err

For those who are a little un-versed with AppleScript, what's a menulet?

They are the icons in the right corner of the Menu bar. Clock, Airport, Bluetooth, etc...

[brokenjago]

OH.

Sexy.

[CEO]

Originally Posted by Scandalous Ion Cannon

I think Apple puts quite a bit of effort into not allowing people to do this.

Your right, sort of. They do make it very obscure, not allowing people to make their own "moveable" menulets by undisclosing the API. Though they do document one API, called NSStatusItem, that will allow to build your own menulet in Cocoa. Thats how the people at Google made the Gmail Notifier. Notice how the notifier is umovable when you cmd-click it.

Now what I want to do is simply make a menulet that calls a complied apple script.

Any ideas out there Cocoa gurus?

[CEO]

Originally Posted by Scandalous Ion Cannon

I think Apple puts quite a bit of effort into not allowing people to do this.

Your right, sort of. They do make it very obscure, not allowing people to make their own "moveable" menulets by undisclosing the API. Though they do document one API, called NSStatusItem, that will allow to build your own menulet in Cocoa. Thats how the people at Google made the Gmail Notifier. Notice how the notifier is umovable when you cmd-click it.

Now what I want to do is simply make a menulet that calls a complied apple script.

Any ideas out there Cocoa gurus?

[Diggory Laycock]

To do it 'officially' - you'd want to make a simple invisible cocoa app (add LSUIElement = 1 to the info.plist) - that initialises a new NSStatusItem on start. (and releases it on quit.)

Add one menu item to your menu - the action for the menu item should then execute the script.

http://developer.apple.com/documenta...pleScript.html

http://developer.apple.com/documenta...tatusItem.html

p.s. ideally this should be in the developer forum.

Wouldn't it be easier just to stick a script in the ~/Library/Scritps/ directory and use the Script Menu Extra?

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Diggory Laycock

Wouldn't it be easier just to stick a script in the ~/Library/Scritps/ directory and use the Script Menu Extra?

Or the Dock if you want one-click access.

[P]

Originally Posted by Diggory Laycock

To do it 'officially' - you'd want to make a simple invisible cocoa app (add LSUIElement = 1 to the info.plist) - that initialises a new NSStatusItem on start. (and releases it on quit.)

I'm almost certain that it's NSUIElement, not LSUIElement

[Diggory Laycock]

http://developer.apple.com/documenta...8256-TPXREF136

[goMac]

NSUIElement will also work but I believe it's been deprecated. In the Mac OS 10.0-10.2 days it was the official way of doing it.

[P]

After checking a bit, you're right that NSUIElement is deprecated but still works and is even used by Apple in current apps. For those who are intrested, there is this thread about it at Cocoabuilder