Unicode woes -> Paste into MS Word 2004

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
#1

So I have this code thats been working great, reading some Unicode text and putting it into the clipboard. That is, worked great till I sent it out for testing and a bunch of people said it doesn’t work in MS Word. I get a hold of Word 2004 (the one that comes in Office 2004), and heres what I find out. Well, first off, heres my code:

on run input
	set thePath to input as POSIX file
	set the clipboard to read_file(thePath)
end run

on read_file(the_file)
	set the_file to the_file as string
	try
		open for access file the_file
		set the_output to read file the_file as Unicode text
		close access file the_file
		return the_output
	on error the_error
		try
			close access file the_file
		end try
		return the_error
	end try
end read_file

The input is the POSIX filename I’m giving it, no problems there. This script is widget based, so I have to have it read the Unicode from a file (passing the Unicode doesn’t work, as Terminal doesn’t like it). Anyway, it works great in every Apple app (TextEdit, Pages, Keynote) and every other app I’ve tested on that supports Unicode. However, when going into Word, the stuff gets to the clipboard fine, but Word doesn’t like it and won’t paste. I can paste into TextEdit, recopy and its fine, but going straight to Word doesn’t work. I can’t try reading as <>, as what I’m outputting is utf16, so it “Can’t make some data into the expected type.” Any ideas as to why Word doesn’t like it and what I can do about it? As much as I hate Word as an application, it needs to be supported.

#2

Maybe this will help you guys some. Its possible that MS Word is requiring Styled Unicode text, not just plain Unicode text. You know, Unicode text with Bolding, Underline, etc. I’ve tried having it save them as “styled Unicode text”, but that makes my clipboard contents unknown, and nothing will paste it. Any ideas?

EDIT: I’ve done some testing, and indeed this is the problem. Word accepts Styled Unicode text fine, won’t accept plain Unicode text. I’ve done some research, and it seems Applescript supports styled Unicode text (aka class stux), but I can’t seem to get it to work. I’ve tried code as simple as

set the clipboard to "Unicode test" as styled Unicode text

But, it won’t let me set them like that. All documentation in a book and online doesn’t say how to use it, but simply its supported. Anybody know how I can use this class?