Re: Opening System Preference Panes
Re: Opening System Preference Panes
- Subject: Re: Opening System Preference Panes
- From: "Neal A. Crocker" <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 16:44:56 -0700
Neil,
Thanks. That did the trick. Now I see the "hint" in the dictionary
that suggests that syntax. Do you know if there is a way to write to
set preferences from AppleScript (i.e., turn handwriting recognition
on/off)?
For that, you need to use the "do shell script" command (in Standard
Additions) to use the "defaults" shell command. The shell command
"defaults" let you access a more-or-less system-wide database of
preferences that includes the settings controlled by the System
Preferences. Setting can be written into the database for any domain
using key-value pairs, so you'll need to know what domain to refer
to, the appropriate key for you setting and the values it takes. The
domain for any give preference pane is of the form
"com.apple.preferences.xxx", where xxx depends on the preference pane
your are interested in. You should recognise this form, by the way,
since the applescript
tell application "System Preferences" to get name of panes
returns a list of strings of this form corresponding to the names of
each pane. Each name is actually the domain name you need.
As for how to discover what key and value to use, you can open
Terminal.app and expermiment with defaults shell command (which
incidentally lets you read out the keys and values for any domain to
the terminal window) while changing settings in the System
Preferences pane of your choice. Sometimes, valid keys don't exist
in the database, leaving the preference pane to use some hardwired
default value, but by changing thing the System Preferences pane, you
ought to be able to make any key controllable there show up in the
terminal. To find out the command syntax for the "defaults" command,
type "man defaults" (without the quotes) into a terminal window and
hit return.
Neal.
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