If you’re just joining us, here are Parts One and Two of the “Learn To Speak AppleScript” Series!

Familiar with that quote by Pablo Picasso “Good artists copy, great artists steal”?

Well… let’s just say this:
We’re going to make you into a Great AppleScript Artist with this lesson!

Who Says That There’s No Honor Among Thieves?

With painting, music, writing – it’s a tradition to acknowledge the people that came before you. After all, without their contributions, you’d still be twiddling your thumbs. The best artists may have big egos, but they know that they aren’t starting from scratch — and programming is no different.

Realize this — The very act of writing an AppleScript immediately makes you a part of the Mac Community. It is a deep well where you can draw from the wisdom and insights of its long-standing members, benefit from its strong tradition of mentoring newcomers, and also share **your** insights back with those creative, smart people — all over the world.

As we discussed in Part Two of “Learn To Speak AppleScript”, “good programming” is a by-product of good thinking. Your head and your ego need to be situated properly to think clearly and to do your best work. It’s no different that a batter stepping up to the plate, a singer stepping up to a microphone, etc. — you should do what you have to do in order to “settle in” before game time.

Here’s one thing that I’ve been doing before writing or programming lately: I re-read Liz Danzico’s post (a.k.a., @Bobulate) about “The Currency of Enthusiasm”. Her post is a reminder that I can encourage more good work in the world by just taking a moment to acknowledge it when I see it. (BTW — Nice job, Liz! )

And believe it or not, I can make the world a better place by using someone else’s code bits in my AppleScript.

The Art of The Steal

Picasso made a distinction between “copying” and “stealing” — “stealing” being the road to artistic greatness.

Is “stealing” just copying more? No.
It’s quite literally the act of taking something that belongs to someone else — and making it your own.

After all, chances are that if you’re facing a programming challenge (hell, if you’re facing any kind of challenge in life), some one else has been through it. Thankfully, programmers as a group tend to talk in great detail about the “code dragons” that they’ve slain — and they often publish the source code that they used to do it.

So I say find that code. Use it. And, ultimately, make it your own.

And that, my friends, is “The Art of the Steal” and an essential key to Learning to Speak AppleScript. Find those smart people who have generously shared their solution to your problem, use it not only to solve your immediate problems but also to learn, and then acknowledge that their good work was a help to you. If you can, find ways to improve their bits and make them your own — and share your contribution back with the community so that other people can benefit from it.

Take a penny. Leave a penny.

“Internet etiquette” isn’t some esoteric thing: If you do it correctly, you’ll learn how to be a better programmer, you’ll make new friends, and you’ll get to help people. Your enthusiasm will shine a light on the contributions of others — and encourage new people to add water to the collective well of ideas and not just drink it dry.

Do it wrong — and you’ll be a pariah.

On the Next Page — We Begin to Code!

Click Here To Read Part One of “Learn To Speak AppleScript”

To recap the end of Part One, your goal will be to build a script that will save your emails as text files. The actual programming will be covered in Part Three and, when we get there, I’ll try to stay more “conceptual”.

My goal will be to give you a feel for how an AppleScript does its job — but still include enough real-life code to keep it interesting for more experienced scripters (or for people who came here from a search engine looking for a bit of code to get their scripts up and running!)

But, if you are a beginner, don’t let those computer code snippets intimidate you! They are included primarily so that you can see what a real-life Script looks like and not with any expectation that you master the intricacies of the AppleScript language.

After all, this is really an exercise in teaching you the fundamentals of thinking and speaking AppleScript. In other words, this is going to be more like an English class in literature where we talk about books and what they mean — and not a grammar lesson.

In fact, that metaphor is actually a pretty good way to get started!

The First Step Is Between Your Ears

As I mentioned in Part One, AppleScript is an “English-like” programming language.

What we are going to do in this lesson is to state our goals as clearly as we can — and do so in plain, everyday language. Once we’ve done that, we’ll set about writing an AppleScript that matches up with that description.

Rule #1:
First, we say it in English…. then we say it in “English-like”.

Writing a good AppleScript is like…. (wait for it) …. writing a good anything!

Most things that are well-written have probably started from a place of being well-thought-out, right? That’s not to say that you won’t discover some fun, unexpected stuff along the way — but actions begin with intentions. My experience is this: The clearer you are about your intentions when you start, the more you’ll make the right choices along the way.¹

And the more likely you’ll end up with a working thing at the end of your journey.

The Goal of the Script (In Plain English)

First, we need to state our overall goal as clearly as we can. For this first sample script, that goal is:

“I want a script that will save emails as text files.”

The Basic Elements We’ll Need In the Script:

Now that we know what we want to do, we’ll flesh out the details more fully:

1. I use the Apple Mail application to read my emails.
2. I want to be able to save emails as text files.
3. I want to be able to save more than one email at a time.
4. I want to be able to control where the text files are saved to.
5. I want the new text files to have distinctive names so that I can tell them apart more easily.
6. I want the script to come up with those names so that I don’t have to do it for each file.

“I Four Years Old!”

You’ll notice how explicit I was in calling out each part of what I wanted to do.

This way of thinking in terms of “baby steps” towards your overall goal is probably the most important thing you can take from this lesson.

Here’s why — AppleScript is great, but teaching it to do what you want it to do can be like trying to teach a child. You really need to try and see things through the eyes of a kid (or, in this case, a computer that knows only what you tell it) in order to know how to communicate.

Rule #2:
AppleScript is like an energetic child. It’s eager to please — but in need of clear, constant direction.

It reminds me a bit of that old Bill Cosby comedy routine about a kid named Jeffery:

If you have any hope of getting off the plane with your sanity intact, you’re going to have to learn how to translate your adult language into something a kid can understand. That is to say, it’s something you’re absolutely going to be able to do — it’s just going to take a brief transition while you take a deep breath and mentally switch gears from your language and into theirs.

Sometimes, Kids Just Don’t Understand

I’ll make one more point using the “Talking To Kids Metaphor” as we end Part Two…

Every kid is different.
Some are barely able to tie their shoes.
Some come up to you and, unprompted, freak you out by asking if you’re an existentialist.

In the world of AppleScript, each of the applications on your Mac — programs like Apple Mail, Firefox, Evernote, iCal, etc. — are like kids at different grade levels. And, although you can sometimes guess, you’ll never really know which type of kid it is until you start talking to them and figure out their vocabulary level.

And this is the point where, thankfully, reality departs from the metaphor: In the computer world, you can actually see which words an application knows ahead of time — sparing you painful, Jeffery-like conversations. When it comes to speaking AppleScript, each program keeps a list of the vocabulary it knows in an AppleScript Dictionary. (Easy to remember, right?)

Ready To Talk?

In Part Three, we’ll open up that dictionary and start having an AppleScript conversation with a fairly “well-spoken” kid on the Application playground — Apple Mail!

1. I’d like to welcome everyone to the Veritrope.com “Den of Zen”…

What Exactly is AppleScript?

AppleScript is an English-like language used to write programs that control applications on your computer. The “English-like” part is important — it means that you don’t need to have a computer science degree to use it.

Simply put, it’s programming for regular people who want to get things done faster.

The programs that you write in AppleScript are called “scripts” (you saw that coming, right?). Much like the script for a movie, an AppleScript is really just a list of instructions for your computer to follow. It’s kind of like saying to your Mac, “Okay — when I say this, you need to do X, Y, and Z.” Honestly, that’s all that scripting means… giving your Mac a To-Do list.

Best of all, it’s free! Apple generously includes several tools that you’ll need to get started with automating tasks on your Mac — including the AppleScript Editor, which is used to write and save new AppleScripts for your computer to follow.

What is AppleScript Good For?

If you’ve ever known the soul-sucking drudgery of having to perform the same tasks over-and-over again on your computer, then AppleScript is for you! AppleScript automates repetitive tasks for you. So, instead of wasting time doing everything by hand, your computer does it for you…

(This is, after all, what they are supposed to do in the first place. )

Need to change the names of 100 files? You can either spend the next hour clicking and typing yourself into carpal-tunnel-induced dementia¹ — or spend 2 minutes to write a script, click a button, and it’s done!

Most programs on the Mac have at least some level of support for AppleScript and, if you look around Veritrope.com, you’ll see AppleScripts that I’ve written to work with (and to connect together) many popular Mac applications. There are literally thousands of AppleScripts available to automate your system (most of them free!).

And, if by some chance you can’t find a script that someone else has written to automate a particular task, it really is easy enough to write one for yourself.

How do I learn AppleScript?

People often write me asking “How did you learn AppleScript?”

The simple answer is that I started reading AppleScripts written by people who knew what they were doing. The more that I read, the more I understood what was possible — and also some of the things you needed to make a working script.

In other words — Before I could really speak AppleScript, I started to learn how to **THINK** AppleScript. It’s really not any different than if you were dropped into a place where you didn’t know the language. You’d probably understand what the people around you were getting at — long before you learned enough of the language to make yourself understood.

How To Learn The Language

The quasi-official macosxautomation.com site is probably the best place to get started. It has lots of introductory tutorials and code examples for the beginning AppleScripter — but also some great introductions to other utilities that really set the Mac apart (like Automator and Services).

People like Ben Waldie (a guru of AppleScript and Mac Automation) — as well as any number of people who post on the MacScripter forum — also really helped me get going. I was truly inspired by their projects… and also by the community that they maintained to help new people like me get started.

As I started to really get more into it, I also found some great books about AppleScript (Especially Sal Soghoian’s “AppleScript 1-2-3″)

Learning How To Think

All of the resources that I just mentioned are the places to learn the actual ins-and-outs of programming in AppleScript… Honestly, you really can’t do much better than all of these great, talented teachers! Read what they have to say — and they’ll whip your scripting vocabulary and programming grammar into shape before you know it!

What I’d like to do here is a little different: I want to try and teach you how to think in AppleScript so that, while you’re learning from these great resources, you’ll have an existing framework for understanding what they’re trying to teach you. That way when it comes time to write your own scripts, you’ll hopefully have a stronger sense of what your looking for and, what’s more, the types of scripts you’ll need to put together to make it all work.

In Part Two of this series, we’re going to start to build our first sample script: An AppleScript that will save your emails as text files!

1. This is not a real condition…I hope!

Well Scott — If there wasn’t one before, there is now!

Features

• This AppleScript will export any selected Messages or Notes in Apple Mail as individual text files to a temporary folder on your Desktop (called “Temp Export Folder”);
• The script also attempts to remove any “illegal characters” from the file name as to avoid the process grinding to a complete halt!
• If you have Growl installed, the script should detect it and notify you when your export is completed.

Current Limitations and Open Issues

(Otherwise known as “Places Where You Could Help Out!”)

• I kept the output very basic — only spitting out the content of the note/message as the content of the text file. It *IS* possible to add more information from the messages and, if people are interested in that, let me know!
• Errors that will undoubtedly arise when you do something that I didn’t think of or test for!

How to Install and Use

First, select the messages or notes in Apple Mail.

Then just run the script… either:

1. Manually;
2. By using Snow Leopard’s “Keyboard Shortcuts”, or;
3. By using FastScripts

Source Code and Download Link on the next page!

UPDATE — June 9, 2010

I have just posted Version 1.3 of the script which marks a departure from previous releases in a couple of ways:

1. The Script is now an App — Just double-click it to run, throw it into your Dock, or set it up to run with a keyboard shortcut… whatever floats your boat!
2. I’ve eliminated the Source Code from this post to make everything fit onto one short page — and also because, of the thousands of people who have downloaded the script, only a handful have shown any interest in playing around with it. If you’re interested in helping me improve the script (or are geeky for AppleScripts), just use the contact form to get in touch and I’ll hook you up.

Features (Updated June 9, 2010)

• This script exports a text copy of every selected email message in Mail into Evernote.
• UPDATED: This script will now also attempt to add attachments as well (see below for the “fine print” on this)
• When the script creates the note in Evernote, it uses the Subject line of the email as the title of the note, and it also uses the date the email was received as the “Creation Date” of the note.
• The script also copies basic header information to the first line of the note (e.g., a working mailto: link for the message sender and also date/time information).
• A direct link between the Note in Evernote and the Message in Mail is now functional! Just click on the little arrow next to the message link in the “Source URL” area to be taken directly to the original message!
  

• I have added a tag dialog box which lets you tag items on the way into Evernote. If you have selected more than one email, the tag(s) you choose will be applied to all of the messages.
• The script defaults to sending the messages to your Default Notebook. As in the earlier version of the script, you can also retrieve an alphabetized list of your current Evernote Notebooks and select which notebook to archive your messages into.
• Want to make a new notebook? No problem — The script has a “Create New Notebook” button which will let you do that on the fly!
• Automatic Growl detection has also been enabled which will save you a trip to the Script Editor to enable/disable it.

Current Limitations and Open Issues

(Otherwise known as “Places Where You Could Help Out!”)

1. Text of emails only — not HTML (yet…)
2. Evernote seems to have stalled in their AppleScript development so, unless I can figure out another way to do it, the attachments will have to be imported as separate notes. (Try it on a couple of notes first to get the feel of things.)

   You can manually merge the notes later if you’re so inclined – FYI.

3. If you don’t already have an Evernote Premium account, this won’t magically allow you to save file types that aren’t a part of their free offering.

How to Install and Use

Just highlight the email messages you want to send from Apple Mail to Evernote and run the script!

1. You can highlight the email messages you want to archive into Evernote and then double-click this script file;
2. You can save this script to /Library/Scripts/Mail Scripts and launch it using the system-wide script menu from the Mac OS X menu bar (The script menu can be activated using the AppleScript Utility application). Keyboard shortcuts can also be assigned to AppleScripts in the script menu using the System Preferences “Keyboard & Mouse Settings”.
3. If you’re importing a lot of items, I’d recommend that you change a few settings inside Evernote before beginning the import. In the “Clipping” tab of the Preferences menu, uncheck the boxes in the section called “After a clip:”
   
   If the boxes are checked while importing a large number of items, Evernote will fill your screen with open windows and sound like it is repeatedly shooting you with a laser from a 70’s Sci-Fi movie. Trust me — uncheck the boxes first and you’ll be much happier!

FastScript link and support

Do yourself a favor and download and install FastScripts from Red Sweater. Triggering the script from the keyboard really supercharges the process — you’ll watch items practically fly into Evernote with a few keystrokes! Here’s how you set it up:

• Copy script or an Alias to ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Mail
• Set up your keyboard shortcut in the FastScripts Preference menu

For my FastScripts workflow, I am using ⌘ E (as in Evernote) for my global “Send to Evernote Shortcut”. I use AppleScripts to move items from several programs into Evernote — FastScripts can detect which program I’m in and pick the appropriate script to create the note. All I have to remember is ⌘ E!

If you use the FastScript Lite version (or the native OS X shortcuts), you’ll probably need to set up distinct keyboard shortcuts for each of your “Send to Evernote” scripts.

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