So here’s my problem: I would like to display a dialog that stays on screen until some other process finishes. I now about the “giving up after integer” command, but that would be highly inaccurate if it has to wait until something else is done. Something like:
display dialog "Processing..." buttons {"Stop"} wih icon caution
.
some code that might take a while to execute
.
but i don’t think there is a way to tell the dialog to give up using a variable that is defined after it’s statement. Is there some other way to let the user now that the machine is working?
Not with vanilla AppleScript with a continuous dialog. If you want to spend a little money, you could look into Extra Suites or 24U Appearance OSAX which provide the ability to implement progress dialogs. Or you could create an AppleScript Studio app with all the interface elements you want. Or you could write a script that opens a dialog with a short give up time then continue the script, periodically opening the dialog (again with a short give up) to let the user know it’s still working. Or you could cheat by opening a new window in something like TextEdit with your processing message saying it will be closed when the process is done, and then, of course, closing it when the process is done. You could open a Finder window to a new folder named “Process…” and kill it at the end, etc. Lots of options…