Getting ical to speak current calendar events

Question

I am admittedly an applescript rookie. I am trying to figure out how to get the computer to speak today's ical events.
I have found this information:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20091115201138792
I have installed the necessary icalbuddy program:
http://hasseg.org/icalBuddy/
The problem is writing the script to work correctly. I would like to go just a little bit further. So far, I can get it to speak the days next event, but on some days there are no events so I would like it to react to that and say "Today you have no appointments"
This is the working script:
set theNextOrCurrentEvent to (do shell script "/usr/local/bin/icalbuddy -ic "mycalendarname" -eep "*" -nc -b "" -n -li 1 eventsToday")
say "Today you have" & theNextOrCurrentEvent
My experience with using conditionals is very limited. This is what I have so far:
set theNextOrCurrentEvent to (do shell script "/usr/local/bin/icalbuddy -ic "mycalendarname" -eep "*" -nc -b "" -n -li 1 eventsToday")
if result is equal to "text" then
say "Today you have" & theNextOrCurrentEvent
else
say "Today you have no appointments"
end if
If I run the very simple version:
set theNextOrCurrentEvent to (do shell script "/usr/local/bin/icalbuddy -ic "mycalendarname" -eep "*" -nc -b "" -n -li 1 eventsToday")
if there is no event it will show the results as simply: ""
if there is an event it will give me the name of the event: "event"
How can I write this script? I suspect my problem is with the "text" part. I have tried to google this extensively but haven't come up with anything useful.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Sincerely,
Michael

Answer 1

Thanks for your help with this script. I really appreciate it. Here is the final script that I ended up going with. The only challenge I had was dealing with multiple calendar items.
say "lets look at today's schedule"
set theNextOrCurrentEvent to (do shell script "/usr/local/bin/icalbuddy -ic "mycalendarname" -eep "*" -nc -b "" -n -li 10 eventsToday")
if the result is not "" then
repeat with anEvent in (paragraphs of theNextOrCurrentEvent)
say "Today"
delay 0.5
say anEvent
delay 1.5
end repeat
say "there is nothing else scheduled for today"
else
delay 2
say "You have nothing scheduled for today"
end if
Thanks again.
Sincerely,
Michael