ThisSpace

One of the first things that happened to me in Spaces that irked me was its
auto-switching to another space when I didn’t want it to. Sure, that’s
probably what I’d want it to do a lot of the time, but if I’m trying to open
a new window for an app that already has windows in other spaces, I have to
select that app, create a new window, grab its title bar, and move back to
the space I was in when I selected the app.

I was wondering what would happen if you could create a new window without
activating the app, so I typed this into Script Editor:

tell application “iTerm”
set term to (make new terminal)
tell term
launch session “default session”
activate
end tell
end tell
{: lang=applescript }

The result is a brand new iTerm window in my current space, without regard to
whether there might already be such a window in another space. Switching
spaces from a script is pretty easy too — as long as you aren’t holding down
any modifiers when the script runs (say, by having used command-r in Script
Editor):

tell application “System Events”
delay 1 — so I can let go of command
keystroke “2″ using control down
delay 1 — so you can see one switch happen and then the other
key code 125 using control down
end tell
{: lang=applescript }

The one missing piece is moving a window — I don’t think it’s possible to drag
an object via GUI scripting, so you can’t grab the title bar of a window,
switch spaces, and then release it. At least it might be possible to create
a fairly complex setup from a login script…if you had a lot of time on your
hands.