Re: AppleScript with widget.system

Subject: Re: AppleScript with widget.system

From: Tom Bunch <email@hidden>

Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 11:55:05 -0700

Delivered-to: email@hidden

AppleScript wants newlines. If you were able to get error reporting, you'd find that it was complaining like this:

25:26: syntax error: Expected end of line but found unknown token. (-2741)

Try:

var commandLine = "/usr/bin/osascript -e 'tell application \"Mail\"\nactivate\nend tell\n'";

widget.system(commandLine, null);

The system call just hands whatever your command is over to /bin/sh for interpretation, though by that time your _javascript_ will have already done some: \" to " and \n to a real newline and so forth. So you can always test on the command line. Also, system will for a process for every call, so I'd generally prefer to do this in objC anyway:

- (void)activateMail;

{

NSString *scriptSource =

@"tell application \"Mail\"\n"

" activate\n"

@"end tell\n";

NSAppleScript *script = [[NSAppleScript alloc] initWithSource:scriptSource];

NSDictionary *error = nil;

[script executeAndReturnError:&error];

[script release];

if (error) {

NSLog(@"error = %@", error);

}

It gives you error reporting. If your script is expected to return results, you can get them from the return of executeAndReturnError:

-Tom

On May 19, 2005, at 5:50 AM, John Goodman wrote:

Hello,

I am having inconsistent success using widget.system to execute AppleScript commands.

For example, this code works -

var commandLine = "/usr/bin/osascript -e 'tell application \"TextEdit\" activate end tell'";
widget.system(commandLine, null);

However, it doesn't work for all applications. If I substitute "iTunes" or "Safari" for "TextEdit", it will launch the named application. But, it *won't* work if I use the names "Preview" or "Mail". Most importantly, it won't work with the application that I have written which I need to access with my widget. If I use Script Editor, I can launch any of these applications with this AppleScript command.

I don't want to use widget.openApplication because I want leave the Dashboard and my widget active, so that I can use my widget to send additional AppleScript commands to the open application.

Thanks for any tips.

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Re: AppleScript with widget.system
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References:

>AppleScript with widget.system (From: John Goodman <email@hidden>)