Changes

• Initial release!

Writing Mail.app Plugins

To get started writing plugins for Mail.app, I suggest the following steps:

1. Fscript

   Download the marvelous FScript, including FScriptAnywhere.

   Familiarize yourself with FScript (it’s like Smalltalk + ObjC + Python, or something), and use FScriptAnywhere to start browsing around the object hierarchy of Mail.app. Figure out what controllers or views you want to target.

2. The Template

   Download this template here:

   

   Mail Plugin 1.0

   and install into ~/Library/Application Support/Apple/Developer Tools/Project Templates/Bundle

3. Code!

   Create a new project using the template.

   Right away, the project should compile and create a double-clickable installer. Once installed, your plugin will log “Loaded FooPlugin bundle” to the system console (viewable with Console.app). Wahoo!

   The main action takes place in the FooPluginBundle.m file, which is in the FooPlugin Classes > Controllers group. The basic idea is that you’ll pick a few Mail.app classes or method to override, with some combination of class posing, categories, and method swizzling or replacement. If you’re not familiar with these techniques, well, it’s about time you get so!

   The complete classdumps of Mail.app and the Message.framework are included as text files. I’ve created cleaned-up header files few of the most common classes that you might want to link against or customize; but if you want more, you’ll have to dig through the text files and create your own .h files. Let me know if you think that should be different – my reasoning was that there’s no reason to clutter up the project with dozens of headers for Mail.app classes you aren’t customizing; but I could be persuaded otherwise.

   I’ve included some convenient categories on NSObject to make swizzling and replacement straightforward. From there on, it’s up to you!

Feel free to add your comments below. I’m not going to write your plugin for you, but I’d appreciate feedback on how the template can be made more useful.