[Diggory Laycock]

Hi,

I am trying to write a simple AppleScript that I can put in my Script Menu.

What I intend the script to do is this:

*get the selected text in the foremost application.
*replace that text with HTML-style tags around it.

So far I am having problems getting the current selection.

the following script has different results depending on the app:

Code:
tell application someApp
	get the selection
end tell

when someApp == Script Editor
it returns:

Code:
characters 57 thru 64 of document 1

but when someApp == textEdit it returns:

Code:
"TextEdit got an error: NSCannotCreateScriptCommandError"

In fact I can't see any way of getting the selected text the document at all.

Is it possible (without resorting to UIScripting?)

[Camelot]

You're out of luck as far as TextEdit.app is concerned - it doesn't support the 'selection' object.

Some people have blamed limitations in Cocoa's libraries, but some Cocoa apps do support selection so I don't believe that one.

Do you need to use TextEdit at all? Can you use direct calls within AppleScript to read the file?

[Diggory Laycock]

Originally posted by Camelot:
You're out of luck as far as TextEdit.app is concerned - it doesn't support the 'selection' object.

Some people have blamed limitations in Cocoa's libraries, but some Cocoa apps do support selection so I don't believe that one.

Do you need to use TextEdit at all? Can you use direct calls within AppleScript to read the file?

Thanks for the confirmation.

- Direct calls to read the file wouldn't tell me which part was selected.

I have decided to implement this as a service instead.