Lock your S-icons into automation position

It struck me today that when running Entourage, I have two script menus. One is specific to Entourage, the other is for the optional — but handy — system-wide Script menu. Yet both have the same icon — the stylized black and white paper-rolled-into-an-S icon — in my menu bar.

The app-specific script menu was probably more common in classic Mac OS days than it is under Mac OS X. (But yet, as I type this, I noticed that MarsEdit has its own script menu, too. I think that just shows how wired into classic’s scripting Brent Simmons was — I mean, he worked on UserLand Frontier, the original scripting environment for the Mac.)

Ah, I just wish the two menus could be one and the same. If Entourage (or any other application) detected that you had the system’s Script menu enabled, it ought to just turn its own off in favor of the system menu. Or maybe the system-wide menu could show the app-specific scripts first, so that they are always in a known location (top of list, right side of menu bar), and take over the function of the application’s scripting menu. Or, they could just have two different icons, or one could be an icon while the other was text, or whatever.