Hi,
Are there any manuals on apple scripting? There are a few prorams i
would like to write some scripts for?
Best
James
On 17 Apr 2007, at 03:44, Darcy Burnard wrote:
Hi. A couple quick points here. First off, I can't believe that I
hadn't thought of using the delay statement in conjunction with the
say statement. I have played a bit with the say statement, but
hadn't had much luck with it since it was always being cut off by
voice over.
I agree that you can do some interesting things with UI scripting.
I'm new at apple scripting, so haven't done a lot yet, but you can
do simple things like make the sling box client change the tv
channel. This is a minor thing I know, but that in conjunction
with audio hijack pro can give you pretty good vcr type
functionality if you don't need the video.
Finally, to anyone who is new to apple script as I am, I would
encourage you to check out the book "Applescript the missing
manual". This is a great book that I've learned a lot from.
Darcy
On 16-Apr-07, at 12:50 PM, Josh de Lioncourt wrote:
Ever since this topic came up a few days ago, I've been thinking
about it. I did some preliminary research and it seems that the
ability to make programs more accessible via AppleScript was one
of the things it was originally intended for, as far as Apple is
concerned.
Indeed, the tool even has some functionality for UI elements,
outside of mere macro recording, that allow you to write scripts
for programs that do not expose their inner workings to
AppleScript, though many do. A program does not have to be
exposed to AppleScript to make it scriptable.
Shortcut keys can be assigned to AppleScripts easily on an
application by application basis, but it seems there is a bug in
assigning a global hot key to AppleScripts. It will appear next
to the menu item in the ApppleScript menu, but pressing the key
will not actually do anything. From what I've read, however,
assigning hotkeys this way does work on an individual program basis.
I discovered this while writing a script for a feature that I've
heard wished for many times here on this list, to read the system
time with a single keystroke, without having to navigate to the
clock. I created an AppleScript to do this extremely easily, the
text of which will appear at the end of this message. The catch
was that, without a global shortcut to assign to it, it's pretty
useless.
Excepting the shortcut key limitations, AppleScript is
substantially more powerful in most respects than Jaws Scripting,
at least at an initial glance. I could see this becoming a huge
asset.
The following is a very simple script to announce the current time
via the system voice. If anyone figures out a way to assign a
global shortcut key to this that actually works, I'm all ears.
Below the script are a couple of very brief comments about it.
set theTime to the time string of the (current date)
delay 0.5
say theTime
As you can see, three simple lines give you an announcement of the
time. The "delay 0.5" causes a delay of half a second before it
actually speaks, giving VoiceOver a chance to shut up. I found
that the say command will not work if VO is currently speaking.
VO, rightly so, gets the priority to the speech engine. If you
have VO speaking at a slower rate, you may wish to extend that time.
I look forward to hearing discussion on this.
