October 31st, 2003

The Rise and Fall of the Script Menu

Posted in Software by Diggory

Classic

In the Mac OS there is a very useful feature called the Script Menu. It allows the user to execute AppleScripts from the Menu Bar.
It appeared first in the Classic OS and was available to the right of the application’s own menus (to the left of the universally-available “Help” menu):

It was available on a per-application basis - if the foremost application did not support the menu then it would not appear. In order to populate the menu you would place AppleScripts in an application-specific folder. e.g. for iTunes a folder called “Scripts” of the iTunes folder (Which was generally in the Applications folder.) The user could also place scripts in their Documents > iTunes folder for scripts that were available for that user only.

Classic Script Menu

Mac OS X 10.2 - Jaguar

When OS X (10.2 Jaguar) was released the Script Menu returned to the Mac OS in a much more elegant incarnation.

  • It was implemented as a Menu Extra - in the top right of the Menu Bar - like the Volume and Battery menu extras. I personally prefer this - it seemed out of place amongst text-based menus.
  • It is not limited to AppleScripts - it can also run Shell Scripts.
  • Instead of each application managing it’s own script collections in odd folders scattered all over the filesystem there was now a central repository for Menu Scripts - The “Scripts” folder of the Library.
  • Because it uses the Library it respects the “cascading” metaphor that Mac OS X inherited from NeXT - The idea that Library resources are a composite of resources from the Network , Host & User libraries. This means you can have scripts available to all users on your OS X Server network, available to all users on a specific machine (host) or just available to one user - The scale of availability depends on which Library the resource is placed in.
  • It uses the “Application Support” metaphor to allow scripts to be application-specific - if you are running an application called FOO the Script Menu will also show Scripts that are at the path Library/Scripts/Applications/FOO/ (remember that Library is any of the three available Libraries.)
Script Menu Extra

Mac OS X 10.3 - Panther - A retrograde step?

Panther Script Menu

In Panther, certain apps (DVD Player, Address Book) seem to have had amnesia - they think we’re back in OS 9. They have implemented their own, classic-style AppleScript Menu. Not only is it ugly it also interferes with the real Script Menu!

As you can see from the ScreenShot on the right these apps display an unnecssary Extra Script Menu (in an ugly place if you ask me) - but also they expect their scripts to be kept in a directory called “Foo scripts” of the “scripts” directory (replace Foo with the name of the app.)

What’s wrong with that? Well, for a start any Directories that are put in the root of the Scripts Directory are automatically listed in the real script menu - and so you end up with a horribly screwed-up Script Menu! So you quietly curse and remove the offending “Address Book Scripts” folder - and the next time you launch AddressBook it REPLACES THE DAMN DIRECTORY!

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