Scripting question

[Thomas Arman]

James said back in Aug 2004:

Michael doesn't like the idler script ;) He considers it a dangerous 
construct. we don't have any plans not to fix it, but it's not at the 
top of the list.

Is there a reason that just setting a scheduled event to happen every 
minute wouldn't work? I know it logs each run and so will confuse the 
log a bit.

There is another way to do it, though it's experimental and not 
supported and might change in the future :) But if you're still game 
after all that you can play a bit. Michael is going to kick me for 
suggesting this to you!

Create a pseudo unit called "Idle Script Control"

in the on script for Idle Script Control add the following.

start idler "Idle Script"


create a global script called "Idle Script" (or whatever you want)

at the end of whatever you need to do every minute add this bit of code

if (status of "Idle Script Control") then
return 60000
else
return 0
end if

This works like the on idle() handler in a stay open applescript. You 
return the number of milliseconds you want the script to wait until the 
idle handler is called again. So 60000 is 1 minute. You return 0 to 
stop the idle handler. So by manually (or in your startup script) 
turning on the "Idle Script Control" unit you light this off. It will 
continue until you turn off the Idle Script Control unit and that check 
falls through to return 0 at the end. There is no "stop idle script" 
command, the script itself must return 0 or it will keep running.

This was generally designed for shorter intervals. I use it to capture 
series of pictures from my view cameras a second apart for a few 
seconds after motion is detected. But it will work for this too. On a 
fast machine and a simple script you could get better than 1 second 
intervals here that you can't get with scheduled events :)

The setting isn't saved across launches, so you would have to re-turn 
the control pseudo on in the startup script or manually after a 
restart.

If you were to return a very small number the script would try to run 
very very quickly and that could be potentially be very very bad as far 
as the performance of the rest of the program is concerned. But each 
global script can only be being used in 1 idle timer at a time, so 
there is no danger of your starting up multiple copies of it.

So, it's dangerous, undocumented, doesn't log anything by itself, 
unsupported and subject to change in the future :) So that makes it 
perfect ad much more fun than just a scheduled event right?

Good Luck,
James