I’m new here (and to AppleScript; though I have some experience in Pascel, C, Bash and UserTalk (anyone remember this? :-)) and I wonder if I can apply styles to specific paragraphs in a Pages dcument that begin with a special marker string.
For example: Many paragraphs start with “%!hd1”. This string needs to be removed and the “Header 1” style, which is already defined in Pages should be applied to every such paragraph.
I thought that there would be something in the lines of:
tell front document of application "Pages"
set paragraph style of every paragraph who begins with "%!hd1" to "Header 1"
end tell
I have tried for some hours now but no luck. Does anyone have any idea how this could be done?
Background: I’m creating the document from a database, writing it first into a text file and want to make it look pretty in Pages.
its really much more complicated than I thought But I have found at least part of the solution, a very ugly script using System Events. Now, I have successfully selected the first occurence of “%!” in my text and want to change its paragraph style to “Header 1”.
How can I do this?? How can I apply a style to the current selection? Or how can I find the number of the current paragraph?
Referencing the paragraph by number is no problem:
set paragraph style of paragraph n to "Body"
)
“Pages got an error: Can’t set paragraph style of selection of document 1 to "Header 1".”
tell application "Pages"
activate
tell front document of application "Pages"
select word 1 # we want to start from the beginning
tell application "System Events"
keystroke "f" using command down
keystroke "%!" using shift down
keystroke return
delay 0.3
keystroke "w" using command down
end tell
set paragraph style of selection to "Header 1"
end tell
end tell
Thanks to Yvan Koenig in macscripter.net/viewtopic.php?id=29125 I could write a solution. It is a little bit ugly because I needed to workaround my missing understanding of AppleScript. But here, it goes:
A text is given that has keywords of different styles at the beginning of some lines: “%!bnl” or “%!hd1”. These indicate the styles that the paragraphs should be set to.
tell application "Pages" to tell document 1
repeat with i from 2 to count of paragraphs
if (length of paragraph i ≥ 5) then # does i begin with our string marker?
set s to (character 1 of paragraph i)
set s to s & (character 2 of paragraph i)
if s = "%!" then
delete character 1 of paragraph i
delete character 1 of paragraph i
set s to (character 1 of paragraph i)
set s to s & (character 2 of paragraph i)
set s to s & (character 3 of paragraph i)
delete character 1 of paragraph i
delete character 1 of paragraph i
delete character 1 of paragraph i
if s = "bnl" then
set paragraph style of paragraph i to "Body New Line"
else if s = "hd1" then
set paragraph style of paragraph i to "Header 1"
end if #s=bnl, hd1, .
end if # %! style marker found
end if #length ≥ 5
end repeat
end tell
It’s really ugly because I couldn’t figure out a way to select or to delete more than one characters…
This script is also a little slow, to bad we can’t find the searchstrings directly. The repeat wouldn’t be necessary and would give some speed.
Thanks a lot for your help!
Gary
Model: MacBook Pro 1.8GHz, Pages 08 3.0.3
Browser: Safari 525.27.1
Operating System: Mac OS X (10.5)
Hi Gary does this do what you want with better speed?
tell application "Pages" to tell document 1
--set paras to (character offset of paragraphs where it contains "%!")
--set paras to (character offset of paragraphs where it's first text contains "%!")
(* get only paragraphs that contain the style string marker*)
set paras to (character offset of paragraphs where character 1 is "%" and character 2 is "!" or character 2 is "%" and character 3 is "!") -- The commented out lines above work but chose this one in case there is a return character being included as the first character.--
(*Get all character offset of paragraphs in one go as alist *)
set AllParas to (character offset of paragraphs) (**)
end tell
(**)
set biglist to {}
repeat with i from 1 to number of items in paras
set theInPoint to item i of paras (*character offset of a paragraph found to have the style string marker*)
repeat with i from 1 to number of items in AllParas
set this_item to item i of AllParas (*character offset of paragraph in page *)
if this_item = (theInPoint as number) then
copy i to end of biglist (*For List of Paragrapths that should be changed*)
tell application "Pages" to tell document 1
(* get character offset's of the style string marker chararcters in the paragraph
to use for matching string marker to what style to use and for the delete later*)
set tCHARS to (character offset of first character of paragraph i where it is "%")
(* the match *)
set StyleChars to characters tCHARS thru (tCHARS + 4) as string
if StyleChars contains "bnl" then
set paragraph style of paragraph i to "Body New Line"
else if StyleChars contains "hd1" then
set paragraph style of paragraph i to "Header 1"
end if
(* the delete *)
delete (characters tCHARS thru (tCHARS + 4))
end tell
exit repeat
end if
end repeat
end repeat
(*Paragrapths that should have been changed*)
return biglist
tell application "Pages" to tell document 1
set dn to name
repeat with i from 1 to count of paragraphs
set parI to paragraph i
if parI starts with "%!bnl" then
my setParagraphStyle(dn, i, "Body New Line")
else if parI starts with "%!hd1" then
my setParagraphStyle(dn, i, "Header 1")
end if --s=bnl, hd1, .
end repeat
end tell
on setParagraphStyle(d, i, n)
tell application "Pages" to tell document d
tell paragraph i
repeat 5 times
delete character 1
end repeat
end tell
set paragraph style of paragraph i to n
end tell
end setParagraphStyle
Here, under 10.4.11,
set paras to (character offset of paragraphs where character 1 is “%” and character 2 is “!” or character 2 is “%” and character 3 is “!”)
is failing with the message:
“Erreur dans Pages : NSReceiverEvaluationScriptError: 3”
Same behavior with:
set paras to (character offset of paragraphs where it contains “%!”)
and
set paras to (character offset of paragraphs where it’s first text contains “%!”)
I really don’t understand the need for the double test with “%!” at index 1 or at index 2 in the paragraph.
The return characters are the paragraphs separators they aren’t embedded in the paragraphs.
I tried a lot of syntaxes to extract the list of paragraphs starting with “%!” in a single instruction using whose or where.
All of them failed with the described error message.
Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE dimanche 3 mai 2009 10:55:23)
Hi Yvan
Actually on the pages v9 doc that I was testing on it kept including a return. (Why I do not know?) So therefore missing a paragraph. Hence why I was making sure with the 1,2,3,4 check.
Also I suspect that you script may take a Long time iterating through a large doc?.
I can not test on 10.4.x at the mo… but wil do later. all syntax works ok here.
thanks. Both scripts run just fine on my system (10.5.6 on a MacBook Pro). Both are significantly faster than the first version from Yvan. Mark’s script took 48 seconds and Yvan’s latest version 43 seconds on a MacBook Pro with 2.83GHz for 350 paragraphs (amounts to ≈ 15 pages).
But I have found at least part of the solution, a very ugly script using System Events. Now, I have successfully selected the first occurence of “%!” in my text and want to change its paragraph style to “Header 1”.