Is it possible....?

Hi,

Depending on the answer to this question, I might be a “newbie” to Applescript very shortly…

I need to know if it’s possible to write an actionscript that can have a relative “path” argument / value passed to it to ‘pop’ open a folder. (The path value sent to it can be syntaxed as true Mac colon delimited paths or as forward slashes which should help?!)

The idea (it’s pretty obvious) is to have a Flash Projector on a CD-ROM to be able to pop open folders on the CD-ROM itself. A vague diagram:

run > appleScript.file (“path”) = open folder (“path”)

Ideally this process should be “invisible” - ie no open boxes or extra programs spawned, the only desired result is an open folder…

Can anybody tell me if this is possible, and if so… give me a rough indication of how to do it. And maybe even do my job for me, clean my car, tidy my flat etc…

Thanks in advance! Paul Isaac. :o

Obviously, you need an “application” to open the folders for you, since you can’t run compiled applescripts from a flash projector.
And, as long as you can’t pass parameters to an app using fscommand, you need several apps to open several folders.

Maybe you can create a first applescript app (all of these must reside next to the projector), which will launch silentiouslly all the further needed apps, and launch it in first time from the projector. eg:

fscommand(“exec”,“.Launcher.app”)

The colon at the beginning of the app should make it invisible, so the user only sees the projector file. All these auxiliar folder-opener apps can be also background-apps, so the user doesn’t see them in his dock.

Then create as many apps you need to open the related folders, all of them background-faceless and invisible.

But you must quit them before exiting the projector, or the user won’t be able to eject the CD! So you can create another app which will quit all the others.

Maybe it’s better if you make separate questions in this or other forum, if you have some troubles…

I know there are some utilities (extensions) for peezee .exe that can write text to files. This would be ideal, since you could attach to a flash button two actions:
writeTextToFile(thisTextFile, thisText)
fscommand(“exec”,“singleOpenerApp”)
Then this “singleOpenerApp” would read the file and launch the appropiate folder. But, since you need it for a non-modifiable disk, and I don’t think that such extensions allow you write files to the user-disk, then this thought is a bit of absurd. :rolleyes:

Fantastic! - that answered pretty much everything!!
Thanks for your help, Paul.