Quick TextEdit save question

[Talix]

I know I’m missing something obvious here, but when I look up Textedit’s dictionary, I see the Save command as have a parameter of “in alias” (also “as unicode text”, but I don’t need that). The problem is, when I use that, it expects the file to already exist! How can I get it to save a new file without going through all the UI scripting? (as an aside, this was easy in BBEdit, but I want to make the script more accessible with the built-in applications)

For tons of extra credit, if anyone can point me towards an OS X executable that converts text files to Palm Pilot format, it would make my life a ton easier. Right now I’m using MakeDoc, but it’s OS 9 only, and I’ve found a couple of SourceForge projects on the subject, but they only have source code to download, and I don’t have enough time on my home computer right now to figure out how to turn that into an executable. :rolleyes: (yes, sad I know). Of course, an Applescript that does the conversion would be even better, but I don’t imagine that exists… :lol:

Thanks a ton!

[jonn8]

This works for me:

–Open this script in a new Script Editor window.

tell application “TextEdit”
save document 1 in (((path to desktop) as string) & “new doc.rtf”)
end tell

As to the second part of your question, have you looked at PorDiBle?
Jon

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

[Talix]

This works for me:

–Open this script in a new Script Editor window.

tell application “TextEdit”
save document 1 in (((path to desktop) as string) & “new doc.rtf”)
end tell

Strange… when I did something extremely similar, it quit with an error that said “[path to file] doesn’t exist”, where [path to file] was the actual path. Here’s the code I used, where fullPathWithoutPRC is a string path that I know is correct from previous testing:

save document 1 in (fullPathWithoutPRC as alias)

Maybe it’s because of the “as alias”?

As to the second part of your question, have you looked at PorDiBle?
Jon

Nope, hadn’t found that, and it looks perfect! Thanks!!!

P.S. I also forgot to mention as a side note that I’m not specifying for the moment the extension on the file to be saved - that shouldn’t matter AFAIK, though.

[Krioni]

Strange… when I did something extremely similar, it quit with an error that said “[path to file] doesn’t exist”, where [path to file] was the actual path. Here’s the code I used, where fullPathWithoutPRC is a string path that I know is correct from previous testing:

save document 1 in (fullPathWithoutPRC as alias)

Maybe it’s because of the “as alias”?

Definitely, for something to be an alias, it MUST exist. So, jonn’s example was to just specify a path, and use that. Many applications that claim (in their dictionary) to require a file, alias, or file specification will accept plain string paths. I find this pretty annoying, but that’s the way it is. I would hope there is never an application that actually requires an alias, because, as you noted, that is very annoying when saving a NEW document. If there was, though, a do shell script "touch " & quoted form of myPath command would create a new empty file for you.

[Talix]

Ah, good to know that distinction. Thanks a bunch! 8)