Re: Problem getting position of desktop items
Re: Problem getting position of desktop items
- Subject: Re: Problem getting position of desktop items
- From: Graff <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 20:07:38 -0400
So far I believe there is no known method for positioning items on the
Desktop via AppleScript under Mac OS X. You can do positioning if the
Desktop to is opened as a folder with "view as icons" set but this does
not translate to the position of the items on the actual Desktop.
There may or may not be an OSAX out there that handles this for Mac OS
X, but I don't believe there is one right now.
I'd say this is a good feature request to submit to Apple!
- Ken
On Jul 20, 2004, at 6:41 PM, Allen Watson wrote:
I've been experimenting with Late Night Software's XML Tools. They
come with
example scripts for saving and restoring the position of desktop
items. I
presume this worked in OS 9, but it does not in OS X.
First of all, the Save Desktop script errors out almost at once, after
prompting for the file name, saying it cannot get the class of item 1
of...
I edited the script, adding a line above the repeat loop, "set
theItems to
items of desktop"; then modified the repeat statement to reference
"theItems" instead of "items of desktop". This fixed the error. (Maybe
just
adding (get ...) around the phrase "items of desktop" would have done
the
same.)
Then, I discovered that it saves the position info for every item on
the
desktop as "-1,-1". Apparently, AppleScript for Finder cannot return
accurate positioning info about where things are on the visual
desktop. If,
however, I open the Desktop folder in a Finder window, in icon view,
and run
the script, it will get accurate positions for all items, and the
restore
script will restore those items if moved.
I'm surmising that the real problem with the examples is not LNS's
fault,
but Apple's. Apparently there is no way to get at the positioning info
for
the visual construct we know as "Desktop". I think Apple should fix
this.
Meanwhile, I think LNS needs to either pull the scripts or add a readme
explaining why they work for OS 9 but not for OS X, and have suggested
as
much to Mark Aldritt.
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