Access indesign files using a script

Question

> If you want to do it as a learning exercise, however, one can
> understand that.
Particularly since that's now what I want to do myself. I make one ID
file with "His name's Tom.", "His name's Dick." and "His name's
Harry." on three lines, and another file similarly with "Her name's
Mary.", "Her name's Betty." and "Her name's Sue." "Tom" and "Sue" have
the character style "Client" applied. So how to script the extraction
of the "Client" names and write them to "clients.txt" on the Mac
desktop? I'm now trying to do that with AppleScript. It seems very
basic and shouldn't take long.

Answer 1

Shane Stanley wrote:
>> (1) I couldn't get theFile set to "clients.txt" on the desktop.
>>
>> set theFile to (document file "clients.txt" of folder "Desktop" of
>> folder "Home" of folder "Users" of startup disk of application
>> "Finder")
>
> That's a Finder reference, but you're not in the Finder here.
Durn!
> Just use a colon delimited path, or something like:
>
> set theFile to ((path to desktop) as text) & "clients.txt"
I did try to do that, but apparently I did something - several things -
wrong. I remember I did get a colon-delimited path to work, but then
I couldn't get the names to copy to it right.
What is path to desktop other than text?
>> (2) I couldn't figure out how to get the script to append to the end
>> of the had-to-be-chosen "clients.txt" file rather than replacing its
>> contents.
>
> write theNames to theFile starting at eof
Oh, I thought eof was something specially in the Scripting Guide menu
script. Trying again, whatever...
Not yet, I'm afraid. The previous script still works:
tell application "Adobe InDesign CS4"
set find text preferences to nothing
set change text preferences to nothing
set applied character style of find text preferences to "Client"
set theFinds to find text
set theNames to ""
set theFile to choose file
repeat with j from 1 to (count of theFinds)
set theNames to theNames & item j of theFinds & return
end repeat
open for access theFile with write permission
write theNames to theFile
close access theFile
end tell
Only adding "starting at eof" it should still work... and it does.
But I'm anticipating trouble when I (again) add your line in place
of "set theFile to choose file"... Actually I pretty much know it's
not going to work, since I directly copied the line before - so why
don't I try the colon-delimited version this time:
set theFile to " Great Royzito:Users:Home:Desktop:clients.txt"
Right?
But no, this gives exactly the same error alert as your line,
that it can't make the string into type file. And then afterward,
oddly, if I run it again it says "Adobe InDesign CS4 got an error:
File Great Royzito:Users:Home:Desktop:clients.txt is already open."
So the string apparently serves to open the file, but not to write
to and/or close it. What do you make of this? Something else that
broke or is different in CS4, perhaps?
The file seemed to close only when I quit all applications and
force-quit the Finder. Is there a better or quicker way to do it
than that?
Thanks,
Roy