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Mail Search Tutorial: Design the Application

In this chapter you’ll use AppleScript Studio to design a fairly complex AppleScript Studio application called Mail Search. Mail Search searches for text in messages in the Mac OS X Mail application. You’ll design Mail Search by performing the steps described in the following sections:

1. “Identify a Goal for the Application.”

2. “Examine Mail’s Scripting Dictionary.”

3. “Specify Operations for Mail Search.”

4. “Design the Interface.”

5. “Plan the Code.”

You’ll complete the Mail Search application in the following chapters:

• “Mail Search Tutorial: Create the Interface”

• “Mail Search Tutorial: Connect the Interface”

• “Mail Search Tutorial: Write the Code”

• “Mail Search Tutorial: Build and Test the Application”

• “Mail Search Tutorial: Customize the Application”

This organization demonstrates a design decision to use separate steps to create the interface, connect it, and write scripts to perform operations. Working in this manner is appropriate for a tutorial, where the outcome is known in advance, but once you’re familiar with AppleScript Studio, it may not be the most convenient way to design your own applications. Instead, you may choose to work more incrementally, adding part of the interface, connecting it to a handler, and testing (even if only with diagnostic statements to show that program flow is working properly). This tutorial points out places where you might choose to build and test the application in the normal course of development.

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