Program with Mail Rule script

Question

I am trying to develop a Mail run script and I am running into problems. The Rule is being trigger because I have a change my color rule action and a script action. The color changes but the script does not appear to trigger at all. His is the script.
using terms from application "Mail"
on perform mail action with messages theMessages
tell application "Finder" to set pathToAttachments to (path to desktop folder as string)
tell application "Mail"
repeat with theMessage in theMessages
set theText to content of theMessage
if theMessage's mail attachments is not {} then
repeat with theAttachment in theMessage's mail attachments
set theFileName to pathToAttachments & theAttachment's name
try
save theAttachment in theFileName
on error errnum
end try
tell application "Preview" to open file theFileName
tell application "Finder" to delete file theFileName
end repeat
end if
end repeat
end tell
end perform mail action with messages
end using terms from
tell application "Mail"
set myMessages to selection
tell me to perform mail action with messages myMessages
end tell
Notice the tell block at the end. If I uncomment that, select a mail message and execute that in a script editor, all is fine.
With that block commented out and try to execute it using the *Apply Rules* nothing seems to happens. Even if I put a Beep statement inside the "on perform mail action with messages theMessages" block, That does not even sound off.
Anyone see why this would execute as a rule?

Answer 1

Camelot wrote:
The logic of whether to invoke the rule is not within the script.
You tell Mail.app to run the script when certain conditions are met (e.g. sender address, recipient address, or one of several other conditions). Once Mail.app has decided the messages matches the conditions it calls your script.
I realize that is the theory behind mail.app, but it has been my experience with Rule settings that they do NOT run "automagically" when conditions in them are met.
This is clearly illustrated by a number of cases I have where by simply "adding a rule," any rule, that says anything, and then clicking the resulting "apply" button (which only is available when you add or subtract a rule), all the existing rule(s) are processed and mail is sorted according to those rules which had previously been sitting in the inbox. (In my case they are a bunch of "junk" filters).
There is either some bug in mail's triggering mechanism, or some inherently "different" mechanism in use when "auto triggered" vs when "applied." In either case, there is no documentation about it.