Script Debugger supports both Spotlight and Quick Look access to saved compiled script files.

Spotlight

Spotlight is an indexing technology, introduced in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). It keeps track of files and their contents and allows you to search rapidly for a file based on its name or its contents. If you can remember a word or two used in your file, you can find it quickly, rather than having to remember what folder it’s in.

Script Debugger contains a “Spotlight importer” for compiled script files. This means that if Script Debugger is present on your computer, AppleScript compiled scripts are searchable with Spotlight.

Besides the script’s name and contents, you can search in its description, and you can search on the name of the OSA language that the script uses.

If Spotlight stops finding the contents of compiled scripts on your machine, it is likely that the Spotlight indexing system has become confused. You can compel your primary hard disk to rebuild its Spotlight index by saying sudo mdutil -E / in the Terminal; for more information, see the mdutil documentation.

Quick Look

Quick Look is a technology, introduced in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), for viewing a preview of the contents of a file without the overhead of opening that file in the application that owns it.

Script Debugger contains a “Quick Look generator” for compiled script files and applets. This means that the system is provided with the information it needs to translate your file into a preview that Quick Look can present. If a script has been saved with Script Debugger, it will be viewable with Quick Look “in color” (that is, with all the AppleScript compiled script text formatting); otherwise, it will appear in Quick Look as plain text.

Note that because you’re just “peeking” at the script’s text with Quick Look, there is none of the overhead involved with actually opening the script: there is no decompilation and therefore there is no need to launch any targeted applications.