My needs are: I built a database to track my ToDos. I have set up containers or menu objects that will launch my favorite apps, apps that I normally use in the to do events (Safari, iCal, etc.)

I was hoping that it might be possible to use terminal or AS to grab the application icon, probably the smaller number three version, once I set the button to am app.

I was thinking of setting the db up to do this in case I distribute it, I can do it pretty easily manually already.

Example; I set a blank button to Safari. Result, selecting Safari opens safari, but the button now also shows the small Safari icon on it. Most of the solutions so far open a whole list of .icn files. I want to select just the one. THen I can figure out what to do with it in my db project, so long as I have it selected and maybe copied to the clipboard.

I hope all that made some sense to someone?

Much thanks

David

I had to laugh so hard when I read this, I almost spilled coffee over my PowerBook screen :)
Just a note: Unfortunately only Cocoa apps have a Info.plist file, Carbon apps don’t. For example it doesn’t work for MS Office 2004 apps. Waiting for more great articles!

Thanks for your input! It never dawned on me to look in the application’s preferences file, but I suddenly suspect that a wealth of other useful actions could be performed starting from there.

I took a look at your script and will definitely give it a run. Outstanding piece of work!

And may His Noodly Appendage touch all of our scripts!

set plistpath to “/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/Info”
set command to “defaults read ” & quoted form of plistpath & ” CFBundleIconFile”
set filename to (do shell script command)

But sometimes the “.icns” suffix is missing, so you need to check this.

I also wrote a free AppleScript to do the conversion. It’s called iconoodle :-)

http://bbs.macscripter.net/viewtopic.php?id=25281

Best regards from rainy Germany!

Haha – how is it that I discover the most convoluted way to do something and then spend an hour writing a script to automate it?! Excellent (and embarrassing?) comment! Touché.

One could automate this with interface scripting if you wanted to:

tell application "System Events"
tell process "Finder"
keystroke "c" using command down
end tell
end tell

tell application "Preview"
activate
tell application "System Events"
keystroke "n" using command down
end tell
end tell

MacTipper
http://www.mactipper.com/