Running Mac OS X Tiger: A No-Compromise Power Users Guide to the Mac (Animal Guide)

13.2. Using iCal to Schedule Tasks

iCal is the personal calendaring application that comes with Mac OS X. iCal features multiple calendars that can be published to other computers and synchronized with .Mac. To schedule something in iCal, you create an event, which is an entry on the calendar that is at a specific time with a specific duration. Events can be one-time occurrences, or they can repeat.

Each event can have an alarm that can display a notice on your computer screen, open a file, or even launch an application at a certain time prior to the event so that it can be ready for you. In addition, alarms can go off even if iCal is not running. iCal uses the iCal Helper application (stored in /Applications/iCal.app/Contents/Resources) to keep track of events and fire them off on schedule whether or not iCal itself is running.

You can use iCal's alarms along with AppleScript to execute just about any kind of task you'd like. To do so requires only three simple steps:

1. Create an AppleScript application that performs the functionality you want and save it somewhere.

   One logical place to store your scripts is in ~/Library/Scripts. Anything that you store here will show up in the Script menu, once you've enabled it. To enable the Script menu, open up the AppleScript Utility (/Applications/AppleScript) and enable the "Show Script Menu in menu bar" option. If you also enable "Show Library Scripts," the Script menu will be populated with the scripts found in /Library/Scripts as well as those you place in ~/Library/Scripts.

2. Create a one-time or a repeating event in iCal (see Figure 13-2).

3. Set the alarm properties on that event to open your AppleScript application.

   For some sample scripts to run using iCal, take a look at the "AppleScript" and "Automator" sections found later in this chapter.