Modding Mac OS X

Updating the Core Suite

In the previous section, you discovered how to modify an application’s script suite and script terminology files to add new features and enhance scripting functionality. This process, as you saw, can be more than a bit tedious. It involves lots of guesswork and affects only one application at a time. If you want to really go for the gusto, consider editing the core suite itself. There are several advantages to this, such as:

• The core suite uses well-documented classes with lots of untapped functionality.

• Changes to the core suite add power to every application that accesses those classes.

• Changes to the core suite are actually quite straightforward; after you’ve built your own scriptSuite and scriptTerminology files, modifying core classes is a breeze.

• Messing with system files at the very foundation of your operating system is fun.

Warning

In order to work through this section, you’ll need administrator privileges. Make sure you have backed up your computer, because you’re about to get down and dirty with Mac OS X at the System level.

A little history

One day, when reading up about AppleScript Studio, I Googled across this page: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/AppleScript/Reference/StudioReference/sr3_app_suite/chapter_3_section_18.html. This documentation suggested that I ought to be able to do a lot more with my AppleScript windows than I could possibly do with the default suite. Screen after screen of documented properties ranged from setting a window’s ...