Paint the Tiger, Carve the Swan

I use an AppleScript to implement “Open Terminal Here” functionality on my Macs, and just now I noticed on the Intel machine it had stopped working properly if Terminal wasn’t already running. For some reason, on PPC it still sends the message through, but on x86 it doesn’t.

So, I had to use the following code to get it to work if Terminal wasn’t already running, which can be generalised to any application:

repeat while "Terminal" is not in name of processes
    delay 0.5
end repeat

The whole script, which can be saved as an application bundle, set to not show in dock, and then placed in the Toolbar:

-- when the toolbar script icon is clicked
--
on run
	tell application "Finder"
		activate
		try
			set this_folder to (the target of the front window) as alias
			--display dialog POSIX path of this_folder
		on error
			set this_folder to startup disk as alias
		end try
		my process_item(this_folder)
	end tell
end run

-- This handler processes folders dropped onto the toolbar script icon
--
on open these_items
	repeat with i from 1 to the count of these_items
		set this_item to item i of these_items
		my process_item(this_item)
	end repeat
end open

-- this subroutine processes does the actual work
--
on process_item(this_item)
	tell application "System Events"
		try
			get process "Terminal"

			tell application "Terminal"
				activate
				do script "cd " & (quoted form of POSIX path of this_item)
			end tell
		on error -- Terminal Not running, launch and run in first window.
			launch application "Terminal"
			-- May need to wait until Terminal finishes launching
			repeat while "Terminal" is not in name of processes
				delay 0.5
			end repeat
			tell application "Terminal"
				activate
				-- So we don't create a new window: in window 1
				do script "cd " & (quoted form of POSIX path of this_item) in window 1
			end tell
		end try
	end tell
end process_item

 

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