Podcasting Hacks

Build a Simple Sound Cart for Macintosh

Use Xcode on Macintosh to build a sound cart application with AppleScript Studio.

Having sample sounds close at hand is important for podcasters. Using AppleScript Studio, you can quickly build a standalone application with whatever interface you want to control your recording application (e.g., Audio Hijack Pro [Hack #50] ) and play your samples at the touch of a button.

First I start with Xcode, which is available to Apple Developer Connection members (online membership is free) from http://developer.apple.com/tools/download/, and quite possibly on your Mac’s hard drive in /Applications/Installers/Xcode Tools. With Xcode, I create a new AppleScript Application project using the New Project command. For this example, I’ll use the name SampleCart for the project.

Now I want to build the interface, so I double-click the MainMenu.nib file, which launches Interface Builder (shown in Figure 8-14). Using the controls from the Cocoa-Controls palette, I drag three buttons onto the window and change their titles to Start Recording, Stop Recording, and Sound 1, respectively. Start Recording will start Audio Hijack Pro’s recording, Stop Recording will stop it, and Sound 1 will play a sample sound.

Next I select Show Info from the Tools menu. This brings up the information palette, which tells me all about the windows and the buttons. I click the first Start Record button and change the info palette, now named NSButton Info, to display the AppleScript ...