Re: Writing Applescripts that run "quietly"?
Re: Writing Applescripts that run "quietly"?
- Subject: Re: Writing Applescripts that run "quietly"?
- From: Bill Briggs <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2003 08:42:25 -0400
At 12:07 PM +0000 01/03/03, Jason Alexander wrote:
Using applescript, is it possible to launch an application and have
it perform some tasks without actually showing windows or dialog
boxes?
The "normal" mode of operation for AppleScript is to not have dialog
boxes open - it's not designed to "play" the UI like a player piano.
Apple Events work behind the scenes to act on objects directly
without invoking dialogs. In some applications you can do things with
AppleScript that you can't even do through the UI.
As for windows, it depends. It's normal for most applications to
have a window open, but it doesn't have to be frontmost, and it could
be window shaded closed. Any application that doesn't have a window
object (e.g., IE) is not very flexible in this department (you can't
move or resize the window with a script), but for most applications
you could just move the window to a pixel location that was in the
virtual desktop space off of your screen or resize it to something
very tiny, or windowshade it. Some applications (e.g., FrameMaker)
will allow you to make a window completely invisible so all
processing can be done in the background, but I've not noticed this
facility in many applications.
I've got some scripts which automate an application and it's a
little disconcerting to activate the script and watch the
application appear, automatically open some dialog boxes, press
buttons, and then close.
It sounds like the AppleScript you're running is using either Prefab
Player (if it's OS 9) or System Events GUI scripting (if it's OS X).
One only resorts to such things when the application you're scripting
doesn't support some operation you need to perform through a "normal"
scripting approach. It's a technique of last resort, but when nothing
else is available, it can still be exceedingly useful.
- web
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