Problem with repeat loop in Quark

harges · July 30, 2004, 3:01pm

I’m writing a drag-and-drop script to set a number of document preferences on the Quark docs dragged onto it. The script works for the most part with a couple glitches:

For some reason, it successfully processes all but the last file in a group of files dragged onto it.
It sometimes gives me an error saying “file busy.”

I think this may have something to do with using either the Finder or Quark to open each file in the dropped group but I can’t seem to figure it out. The script follows.

Also, does anyone know how AS chooses the order of which items to process when a group of items is drag and dropped? I assumed it would be alpha order but it doesn’t seem so. Is it possible to set that so it processes the file in alpah order or date order in the same way that you would specify the view order in a finder window?

–Open this script in a new Script Editor window.

on open these_items
set Error_list to {}
repeat with i from 1 to the count of these_items
tell application “Finder”
set this_item to (item i of these_items)
set File_Name to name of file this_item as text
my process_item(this_item, File_Name, Error_list)
end tell
end repeat
 [b][color=blue]if[/color][/b] [color=green]Error_list[/color] [b][color=blue]is not[/color][/b] [b][color=blue]equal to[/color][/b] {} [b][color=blue]then[/color][/b]
      [color=blue]display dialog[/color] ("There were problems setting preferences for the following files: " & ([color=green]Error_list[/color] [b][color=blue]as[/color][/b] [color=blue]text[/color]))
 [b][color=blue]else[/color][/b]
      [color=blue]display dialog[/color] "All files have sucessfully had their preferences reset."
 [b][color=blue]end[/color][/b] [b][color=blue]if[/color][/b]
end open

on process_item(this_item, File_Name, Error_list)
tell application “Finder”
open item this_item
end tell
tell application “QuarkXPress Passport”
activate
try
tell document 1
set subscript offset to “10%”
set subscript vertical scale to “50%”
set subscript horizontal scale to “50%”
end tell
on error
copy (File_Name as text) to the end of the Error_list
return Error_list
end try
close document 1 saving yes
end tell

end process_item

[This script was automatically tagged for color coded syntax by Convert Script to Markup Code]

Cody · July 30, 2004, 4:37pm

I’m not sure why your last file never gets processed… a neater way to do the repeat loop looks like this, however:

[This script was automatically tagged for color coded syntax by Convert Script to Markup Code]

Also, we had a thread about ordering dropped items a few weeks back. Here’s a link:
http://bbs.applescript.net/viewtopic.php?t=8446

harges · July 30, 2004, 5:17pm

Thanks. I didn’t know you could set up a repeat like that. Unfortunately, I’m still getting the “File some object is busy.” error. I think it’s got to be a some kind of Finder/Quark conflict. Maybe because I’m opeing the file with the finder and then processing and closing it in Quark, one of the two applications can’t use it and is telling me it’s busy. Who knows.