Finder AppleScript 1.4.0 and 1.4.3
The version has increased to 9.0 from 8.6. In the Standard suite, the ‘print’ command has a new, optional ‘with properties’ parameter. This is a record which may contain specific options supported by the drivers supplied with particular printers; see your printer’s documentation for details. This feature will become useful as more printer manufacturers or driver developers take advantage of the new scriptability features incorporated into the LaserWriter 8.7 file. The ‘application’, ‘container’, ‘sharable container’, ‘disk’, ‘folder’, ‘desktop-object’ and ‘trash-object’ classes contain a new ‘package’ element supported by a corresponding class. The ‘icon family’ class now includes the new ‘large 32 bit icon’ property, as well as new ‘large 8 bit mask’ and ‘small 8 bit mask’ properties. 10/29/99
The Scriptable Finder
Many long-standing bugs in the scriptable Finder, including some remaining from at least Mac OS 8.1, were not fixed in Mac OS 8.6. I listed what I regard as the eleven most important Finder bugs in the note on AppleScript 1.3.7 in Mac OS 8.6, along with three others. No fixes for Mac OS 9 are mentioned in Technote 1176.
Expanding on bug number 12 in my list, ‘move’ without designating a ‘to’ location not only moves the file to the desktop, but it doesn’t return a reference to its new location. The real bug, however, is that it is allowed to compile successfully, since the dictionary says the ‘to’ parameter is mandatory. 10/17/99
Preliminary testing indicates that the duplicate in place bug, number 2 in the list, has been fixed. The ‘duplicate’ command now returns a reference to the duplicated item even when it is a copy duplicated into the same folder as the original. None of the other bugs appears to have been addressed. 10/17/99
What was initially thought by many users to be a bug in the Finder’s icon positioning commands is now revealed, in Revision 2 of Technote 1176, to be a design change in the Finder’s behavior. The Mac OS 9 Finder does not allow icon positioning by way of AppleScript for icons appearing in icon views where either the ‘keep arranged’ or the ‘snap to grid’ option is turned on. If a script attempts to set the position of an icon in such a view, the Finder will return error code number -15274 (window wrong type). The error number will enable scripters to write error-trapping code into their scripts. Jon Pugh was the first to report this behavior, pointing out that one can work around it by turning off ‘keep arranged’ and ‘snap to grid’ before setting an icon’s position. 12/24/99