No more display of the recording ....

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
#1

Hello,

It has been a while since I have worked with AppleScript. OS X has gone by, Panther and now Tiger. Automator is here … Briefly, probably there has been so many changes that I will to learn again this superb utility.

So I started as usual, to make a script by recording it … and zip nothing. I have tried MAIL, MS Word and whatever I do, I get no recording result in the script window. As it changed so much ??? :^) :^):^):^):^):^):^):^):^):^):^):^):^):^)

What am I doing wrong ?? Thanks in advance.

Robert Lespérance

Model: iMac G5 1.6 MHZ - 2GB
AppleScript: 1.10.7
Browser: Safari 419.3
Operating System: Mac OS X (10.4)

#2

Hi, Robert.

Recordability has to be implemented in the individual applications and most software developers simply don’t bother. I think it gets beginners off to a bad start anyway. Recorded scripts contain everything that the user does to get the result, rather than just what the script needs to do “ which misleads learners into thinking they have to include a lot of useless drivel in their scripts. For instance, I’ve just recorded myself opening a folder on the desktop. All that’s needed to script that is:

tell application "Finder"
	activate
	open folder "PDF Saves" of desktop
end tell

My recorded version of it is:

tell application "DragThing"
	activate
	set minimised of dock id 1 to true
end tell
tell application "Finder"
	activate
	select window of desktop
	select window of desktop
	clean up Finder window id 8 by modification date
	make new Finder window to folder "PDF Saves" of folder "Desktop" of folder "nigelgarvey" of folder "Users" of startup disk
end tell

I didn’t even touch DragThing. It just happens to be recordable and recorded itself getting out of the Finder’s way! :confused:

#3

Hello Nigel,

I use most of the time the recorder to see how to script part of my project that I do not know how to do. That being said, how do I record and see the result of the recording ?? I started the recorder and got no result of the recording ??? Do you understand what is my problem ?? Thanks in advance.

#4

Hi, Robert.

Yes. Sorry. What I was trying to convey in my first sentence above is that you can’t record anything unless the manufacturer of the application you want to script has included “recordability” in its AppleScript implementation. I think that most applications now are not recordable as it would take up too much of the developers’ time. Mail isn’t recordable and I wouldn’t think that Word is either. TextEdit isn’t. Safari isn’t. iTunes isn’t. But the Finder is, and so is DragThing.

The only way to find out if an application’s recordable is to try recording a script involving that application. If nothing appears in Script Editor, the application’s not recordable.

#5

Hi Nigel,

Thank you. You made it clear. So apps are mostly not recordable anymore now. Is the purpose for Apple to maintain the «Record» feature in the Script Editor only for OS 9 apps ??

Even after a couple of year of playing around with scripts, my knowledge of AppleScript’ syntaxe and verbs is very small. The recording feature, helped me make scripts, because I could better understand that syntaxe and it’s purpose.

I wanted to create a little script that repeated a sound and needed the syntaxe used by QuickTime to repeat continously a little AIFF file. You see, my objective are small and learning very deeply the AppleScript language and grammar need alot of time, even if I find alot of pleasure learning to script. That was, for me, the utility of the recording feature.

Thanks for keeping me informed of that change in AppleScript.