I've been meaning to look at AppleScript for a while now, more out of curiosity than anything else. As always, the best way to really dive into something new is to try it out. So, equipped with an idea to sync unread news items from NetNewsWire to my iPod, I started hacking together a script that creates a note for each unread news item along with a top-level index note that hyperlinks them all together. As I found out, iPod notes can contain a very, very limited subset of HTML. Simple but effective. See Hack the iPod's Notes and iPod Note Reader User Guide for more details.

If you've not seen AppleScript, it's a cross between a 3rd generation language and english. There's a fairly good language guide on the Apple website, although it's no tutorial. The script editor itself works well and I particularly like the way it auto-indents when you save or compile. In AppleScript, there's a basic set language features (classes and commands) and these are augmented by additional commands and classes provided by AppleScript-able applications. To find out what these are, in the script editor, choose File... -> Open Dictionary... and choose the application you are interested in working with. In NetNewsWire, for example, you have access to items such as the list of subscriptions, each of which can have zero or more headlines (news items). All in all, it's easy enough to find your way around, although I did find Google useful where there is scant documentation.

If you're reading this and thinking, surely somebody has done a NetNewsWire to iPod sync before, you're right. There are a couple of fairly full-featured applications that I found including Pod2Go (syncs text) and Read it to Me (converts news into mp3). By comparison, my script is very short and very hacky, but I did it purely as a learning exercise. I'll upload it to my blog once I'm certain it (vaguely) works.

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Posted by Simon Brown on 08 April 2005 13:06:34 BST #