Re: Scripting Palm Desktop
Re: Scripting Palm Desktop
- Subject: Re: Scripting Palm Desktop
- From: Chris Page <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 16:13:25 -0800
On Monday, November 12, 2001, at 06:16 AM, Jason W. Bruce wrote:
When Palm took over Claris Organizer, they changed certain
dictionary
terms in an effort to make them consistent with the terms used in
the Palm
OS -- the operating system which runs handheld devices. This
broke existing
scripts and introduced a few terms which conflict with AppleScript
keywords
-- a huge faux pas because they really should have known better --
but not
one which affected functionality. For most scripting needs, the
dictionary
is fine. And for the few problem areas, there are acceptable
workarounds.
We did not originally change the dictionary in earlier releases of
Palm Desktop. It was identical to Claris Organizer's (except for
the notice at the top of the dictionary). Around version 2.6, we
accidentally released an in-progress version of the dictionary,
which renamed items to match the terms used on Palm handhelds. It
also contained a few conflicting terms. The next release of Palm
Desktop will rename the items in the UI to match the handheld, so
then they'll match the AppleScript dictionary (and I've fixed the
terminology conflicts).
I apologize for this mistake. Palm probably could have corrected it
in an interim release if it were clear that it was important to our
users. It is very important that you let Palm (not just me) know
that scripting Palm Desktop is important to you if you would like
the word "unsupported" removed from our AppleScript documentation.
In particular, releasing an interim version of Palm Desktop just to
correct the AppleScript dictionary would be a non-trivial affair,
so Palm needs to know if this is important enough to users for us
to make the effort to do so.
Note, however, that apart from the conflicting terms, as far as I
am aware the terminology dictionary accurately reflects the
AppleEvents supported by Palm Desktop. If this is not the case,
please give me specific examples so I can correct them.
If you're technically inclined, you can resolve the terminology
conflicts yourself by editing the 'aete' resource. Furthermore, you
could revert to the older dictionary by copying the 'aete' from an
older version of Palm Desktop. For reference, here are the
conflicting terms and how I resolved them:
Class Property (old => new)
address info label => address label
phone info label => phone label
name info title => title
custom field info title => field title
custom field info text => field text
And here's a message from the very same Jason W. Bruce that tells
how to resolve the conflicting terms using raw AppleEvent codes:
On Saturday, October 6, 2001, at 02:45 AM, Jason W. Bruce wrote:
You can't use the word "text" to refer to the contents of a custom
field in
the Palm Desktop, because "text" is an AppleScript keyword.
Instead, you
have to use raw syntax to set the contents of a custom field. Be
careful
not to recompile after you type in the raw syntax, because
AppleScript will
translate the raw syntax to the Palm Desktop dictionary term "text" in
Script Editor, and will subsequently confuse it with the
AppleScript keyword
"text."
tell application "Palm Desktop"
set custom 2 of address 0 to {+class PCTX;:"Whatever"}
end tell
Again, I apologize for the trouble caused by these conflicts.
--
Chris Page
Mac OS Lead, Palm Desktop
Palm, Inc.
Trying to use Mac OS X as his main OS