O’Reilly’s MacDevCenter has posted the most definitive article I’ve ever seen on attaching keyboard shortcuts to scripts:

Hit-and-Run: Launching AppleScripts With Keyboard Shortcuts

Jochen Wolters explains the why and the how in brilliant detail. Of course, I’m also excited that his description of the how settles on FastScripts and QuickSilver as the best choices. I especially like this summary of FastScripts:

“If you want to use global keyboard shortcuts for launching your AppleScripts, FastScripts simply is the most Mac-like way to achieve this.”

I can live with that description!

I noticed that Jochen dings FastScripts slightly for its alleged inability to run Automator workflows. It can in fact run workflows, it’s just a question of getting the workflow files into a folder where FastScripts will notice them. Since FastScripts 2.2.3 (finally!) added the ability to drag aliases to folders into your script folder hierarchy, you should be able to simply drag an alias of ~/Library/Workflows into your ~/Library/Scripts folder, and FastScripts will pick them up.

For the especially Terminal-gifted, there is a secret FastScripts defaults key that would also help here. The ScriptTreePathsKey specifies the list of paths FastScripts should include in its search for scripts and other launchable items. If you add “FSSP%%%$HOME$/Library/Workflows” to the list, then you should be in business.

It occurs to me that I should include automatic support for listing the contents of ~/Library/Workflows in a future release of FastScripts.

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