Is it possible to applescript the saving of a message to RTF in Mail.app?

Question

I'm fiddling with a script that takes selected messages in Mail.app and, among other things, saves the messages as RTF files. The "Save As..." option in the File menu has the ability to save as the RTF type, but I can't seem to get this done in applescript with the "save" command. I've tried passing it a window object from the message viewer, but it just barfs. Does anyone know if Mail.app can be scripted to save a message to an RTF file (with a file name/path supplied via the AS program)?
Thanks in advance for your help.
P.S. I've tried circumventing this problem by trying to assemble a text document from the email message parts (subject, sender, contents, etc.) using TextEdit, with no success with formatting, but I'd rather get Mail to do it because it already formats the saved email nicely if you do it interactively in the "Save As..." dialog.

Answer 1

Just to make my question a little less abstract, here is the script as it stands so far:
(* START SCRIPT *)
tell application "Mail"
activate
set selectedMessages to the selected messages of front message viewer
set saveFolder to choose folder with prompt "Please pick an empty folder for me to store the email information:"
tell application "Finder"
set parentFolder to folder saveFolder
set parentFolderPath to parentFolder as Unicode text
end tell
repeat with aMessage in selectedMessages
properties of aMessage
set messageSender to sender of aMessage
set messageSubject to subject of aMessage
set messageSent to date sent of aMessage as string
set messageContent to content of aMessage
if (messageSender is "[email protected]") and (messageSubject begins with "manuscript #") then
-- Get thingie number from message subject after '#'
set oldDelimiter to my SwitchDelimiterTo({"#"})
set manuscriptNumber to last text item of messageSubject
my SwitchDelimiterTo(oldDelimiter)
log "NOTE: Email for manuscript #" & manuscriptNumber
-- Make the folder in which to store the stuff for this manuscript;
-- variable "manuscriptFolder" will point to place to store files
tell application "Finder"
try --ignore problems with folder creation, like existing folders/files
set manuscriptFolder to make new folder in parentFolder with properties {name:manuscriptNumber}
on error errorName number errorNumber
if errorNumber is -48 then -- Folder already exists
log "NOTE: folder " & parentFolderPath & manuscriptNumber & " already exists."
set manuscriptFolder to folder manuscriptNumber in parentFolder
end if
end try
end tell
set manuscriptFolderPath to manuscriptFolder as Unicode text
set messageFileName to manuscriptFolderPath & "email.rtf"
log "NOTE: Saving manuscript to file: " & messageFileName
-- Use TextEdit to construct an RTF file of the message to print out later
tell application "TextEdit"
activate
close every document saving no
-- Assemble the document
set docText to "Date:" & tab & messageSent & return
set docText to docText & "Subject:" & tab & messageSubject & return & return
set docText to docText & messageContent & return
log "DOCTEXT: " & docText
set aDocument to make new document at beginning of documents
set text of the front document to docText
-- Save the document as an RTF in the messageFileName
tell front document
save in messageFileName as "RTF "
end tell
end tell
else
log "Message from \"" & messageSender & "\" with subject \"" & messageSubject & "\" will not be processed."
end if
end repeat
end tell
-- Change the text item delimiter and return the existing ones
on SwitchDelimiterTo(delimiterList)
local x
set x to (get AppleScript's text item delimiters)
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to delimiterList
return x
end SwitchDelimiterTo
(* END SCRIPT *)
It successfully walks throught the selected messages, picks out the "right" ones (from a particular address and with a particular subject), makes a folder to store some information about the email, has TextEdit assemble a document from the email's text and has TextEdit save the text file.
It's my kludgey work-around for not being able to either 1) print to a PDF file in Mail.app or 2) have Mail.app save the message itself as an RTF. It would be the bee's knees to get either 1 or 2 working, but I'd settle for figuring out how to format the text in TextEdit more nicely. I'd like to get the strings "Subject:" and "Date:" bold-faced for starters, but I have no way of knowing how to tell TextEdit to do it via AS.
My first try was to try to "make new text" with certain font and size properties at the end of the "texts", but that was a flop. I tried the same thing with "attribute runs" and "paragraphs" with no joy. It seems that the only way to get text into a document is to assign it to the "document"'s "text" property. But then I'm left to wonder how to select bits of it to change the bits appearances (fonts and sizes).
I've been fiddling with AS and automating Mail.app and TextEdit.app for days now, and it's just as perplexing as when I started. Any insite that you folks monitoring this discussion group would be greatly appreciated. The flotsam of script examples I've dredged up with Google haven't been enlightening. I've got a copy of O'Reilly's _AppleScript - The Definitive Guide_, and it's been a tiny bit of help, but I'm drifting.
Thanks in advance for reading.