I’d rather keystroke the whole thing in (but it could be very big), is this a good idea?
In this connection, you should be aware that UI Browser, on the one hand, and System Events and GUI Scripting on the other, work differently with respect to the 'keystroke' command. I mention this just so you won't get confused if you try to test any of this in UI Browser.
Apple's Accessibility API contemplates that the function behind the 'keystroke' command will send one character per call. UI Browser does the same, because I wrote UI Browser primarily as a developer utility for other developers to make sure their applications comply with the Accessibility API.
However, the Apple engineer who authored the GUI Scripting aspect of System Events (the Process Suite) chose to make the GUI Scripting 'keystroke' command send multi-character text strings. I assume he simply called the function in a loop. When I was talking with him (many years ago), I neglected to ask him if there is a limit to the number of characters -- like 256, or 512, or whatever -- or if there are any performance bottlenecks with very long strings.
Perhaps Chris Nebel will spot this message and provide an answer. But, Dave, it would be easy enough to write a script to test it out.