"pete boardman" wrote:

> On 3 Feb 2006, at 17:13, John A.M. Darnell wrote:
> 
>> The code that mounts, however, has a definite beginnning and end. I
>> would like to toss up a dialog just before initiating the process, and
>> then remove the dialog after the process is complete.  Is there any
>> way to
>> do something likek that?
> 
> You could consider using Growl as a notification tool - very easy to
> use from AppleScript or elsewhere. I use it for email and other
> stuff, so once installed you find other uses for it.

Good suggestion.  Growl is showing up as a preference feature in a number of
useful applications and utilities, so users with the Growl preference pane
installed can take their notifications this way if they choose.

Font Manager is one example of a daily-used utility which can post its
notifications to Growl. I use it a lot for folder action reporting, for some
self-filing actions which can take a couple of minutes of background
processing. Notifications are possible from a range of MacOS programming
languages, so it can be used throughout one's range of work tools.

Implementation in AS is quite easy, but if it's not a task that comes
together for you right away, I'd be happy to share some handlers and other
short wrappers I've written.

(Not everyone is a fan of Growl, of course. When a number of applications
are posting notices, they accumulate on screen, which gives some folks "the
UI willies".)
--
Gary