Hi. Thanks for that. I have noticed some differences in my experiences when compared to what you wrote in that post. Probably, Automator has changed in recent versions.
Regarding how to reorder actions in the workflow, you said that you'd select the action and use command-up and command-down. For me, simply placing the VoiceOver focus on an item doesn't seem to focus it for the reorder commands. I have cursor tracking turned on. I've tried VO-space, to activate the item, and VO-enter to select the item, but this still doesn't seem to force the current action to be the target of a reorder command. I tried moving the mouse cursor to the VO cursor and clicking, but the VO cursor doesn't seem to be moved in to the workflow. I always end up activating the wrong object, such as opening the Apple menu. The only way that I've found to reorder on my system is to change the focus in the workflow with the arrows, and then use the re-order commands. This is difficult, because there isn't any feedback when you use the arrows regarding what action has focus. So I move the focus, try to reorder, and, if I moved the wrong item, I press un-do, move the focus, and try again. Hopefully there is a better way. Your post talked about adding variables that are already defined, such as the current date and time. I was concerned about how to add my own custom variables. For example, if you put up an input box to ask a question, the next action in the workflow must set a variable with the result of the dialog before you should present another input dialog. This isn't exactly what I'm attempting, but the concept is the same. However, I decided to try using predefined variables, since that was apparently working for you. I added a predefined variable, but had the same problem that I had with custom variables. 1. In the top level variables table, none of the variable names read. Each row of the table says "object replacement character". I can use your technique of moving mouse to VO cursor and double clicking to open the variable's attributes window to view its name or set its format. Similarly, I can move to my own custom variables and open their attributes windows to view their name. This is slow going, since I must open each variable's attributes window to even know what variable is focused, but at least I can work around this problem. 2. What has me stuck, though, is when I want to use a variable of any type in an action. In actions that accept variables, there is a pop-up menu where I either select to use an existing variable, or to create a new variable. The only thing that VoiceOver will read in this pop-up menu, though is the New Variable entry. I can arrow to the other entries, but they are silent. Even after I pick one of the silent entries, and return to the action, the pop-up button now has a blank label. I'm on OS 10.6.2. Automator is version 2.1 (246). I'm fully updated. Are we using the same version? Are you experiencing these problems? Thanks for your assistance. Bryan -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Esther Sent: Saturday, January 09, 2010 2:13 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Using Automator with VoiceOver Hi Bryan, You might want to read through my archived list post about using variable in VoiceOver here: http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries%40googlegroups.com/msg08577.html (Re: Another List? was: Re: apple script and vo) This contained excerpted posts from earlier correspondence off of this list about Automator (under Leopard) using variables. Actually, even at that time you didn't have to double-click to select actions -- carriage return would add the action to the workflow. Quite a lot of the way that navigation was outlined there reflects historical behavior -- for instance, on applications where VoiceOver accessibility is in a transitional state, I almost always have my mouse cursor track my VoiceOver cursor so I can click on and activate selections that I can't otherwise use. So there may also now be simpler ways to navigate, although what is outlined will work. HTH Cheers, Esther On Jan 9, 2010, at 08:46, Bryan Smart wrote: > Has anyone here spent much time with Automator? > > Most of the program works well, but there is a very big hole. It seems > almost impossible to use variables. > > When you create a variable by adding a Set Variable action to the > workflow, and then try to use pop-up menus in other actions to select > the variable that you created, the names of the variables don't appear > in the menu. In places where I should hear variable names, all I hear > are menus with blank items that don't announce anything. The menus in > general read, since there might be an item in the menu called "New > Variable...", but the other entries, where I should be able to select > from existing variables, are all blank entries. > > There is a table in the window that shows all of the existing > variables. I can tell that the table contains rows through VoiceOver's > announcement of current row, but VoiceOver doesn't read any content > for the row. So, I can't hear the name or any other status info about > the variable. > > Since there doesn't seem to be any way to edit or assign variables > other than using the user interface of Automator, it looks like there > is no way to use variables. > > I've gone through the menus, but can't find any sort of adjustment to > the appearance of Automator that would help me out. Has anyone else > had better success with variables? > > Bryan
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