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GUI Scripting: Text fields and areas
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GUI Scripting: Text fields and areas


  • Subject: GUI Scripting: Text fields and areas
  • From: Simon Forster <email@hidden>
  • Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2002 11:27:11 +0000

I was playing with GUI Scripting yesterday - and a most useful tool it is too. Well done Apple. I can see that this has amazing potential.

My testing yesterday was with a small, shareware application which allows me to send SMS text messages from my computer. Needless to say, this application is not scriptable. I probed the applications window to find out the name of all its elements and found out that:

1) The tab group which allows one to move between 4 different layouts in the window was not accessible.

2) In one layout (the one I'm most interested in) the text field for entering a phone number was not available.

3) In the same layout, the text area for entering the message was not available.

The other UI elements on this layout can be accessed.

Item 1) is not an issue as there are menu options which allow one to swap to the correct layout - and these menu options have keyboard shortcuts making this even easier. ('keystroke "1" with command down' neatly flips to the layout I'm after).

2) and 3) are more irritating as I need to know, reliably, which of the text UI elements the cursor is currently in. The only way I can see of achieving this aim is to "click" in the appropriate box. (Tabbing between the 2 works but can lead to uncertainty as to which text UI element we're in).

Do you think I am seeing a deficiency in the current implementation of System Events which doesn't "see" tab groups and text UI elements; a quirk unique to the shareware app I'm testing against; a. n. other issue?

I accept that I can test some of this myself but I'm keen to hear from others using the new GUI Scripting tools made available to us by Apple. A bit of dialogue never did any harm!

TIA (and all the best for the New Year)

Simon Forster
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