Applescript Display Dialog Default Answer Rendering Issue

After I installed Lion, I started having issues with Applescript rendering a dialog with a textbox.
This is the sort of thing I end up seeing:
The text box in the dialog doesn't render properly, and it's not possible to enter anything into it. I've played with the display dialog parameters but it doesn't matter if I give an empty string for the default answer or other text, the behaviour is always the same.
Does anyone have any ideas as to what the issue might be? I suspect I might need to reinstall Lion, but I'm not sure that's even going to clear up the issue.
Thanks in advance.

Tried replacing 'Standard Additions' osax, dumping editor prefs, dumping ALL user prefs (not recommended for faint of heart), using a different copy of Script Editor. Nothing helped.
The user account displaying the bug is an old one; likely updated continuosly from the days of Tiger or earlier.
A std account on the same drive, which merely went through the Snow Leopard -> Lion transition, does not exhibit the edit-text display bug.
So I bit the bullet, and used Migration Assistant to move to a new account on a clean install of Lion on a spare hard drive. 3.5 hours later, the Applescript edit text display bug is gone.
As far as I can tell, all docs, Apps etc. made it through intact.
If that continues to look true over the next few days, I'll try using SuperDuper! to copy the new drive back to the older, faster HD.
Perhaps some other Lion bugs'll also go away now that I've got a cleaner install.

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Applescript: display dialog until memory card is inserted

I'm developing an applet to automate the process of copying video footage from my camera's memory cards onto my hard drive. It works perfectly, except that I cannot quit it. Here is the part of the code that needs help. It checks every 5 seconds for a memory card and, if one is inserted, continues to copy everything off it.
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The problem is that there is no way I can find to quit once it is in this wait loop. The menu command to quit and the Command-Q hotkey both do nothing so I have to force quit when done. What I'd like is to be able to have a dialog displayed asking this user if they want to quit while it's waiting, but I don't know how to do that without it having to "give up after 5 seconds". That makes a new dialog display again every 5 seconds when it rechecks for memory cards, which would get very annoying for anyone using the computer.
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Keeping a script or application locked up inside delays or repeat loops will keep it from responding to system events. There are a few ways to monitor when a volume gets mounted:
Write your application using AppleScript in Xcode to watch for a workspace notification;
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AppleScript Display dialog if clause

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Heres my code so far...
set question to display dialog "If you're ready to clock in, punch for lunch, or clock out click YES. If you are stuck on a chat cancel this bad boy." buttons {"No", "Yes"} default button 2
set answer to button returned of question
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end if
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delay 300
display dialog question
end if
Thanks in advanced for any input!

You can also just put the whole thing in another repeat statement:
repeat -- forever
set answer to button returned of (display dialog "If you're ready to clock in, punch for lunch, or clock out click YES. If you are stuck on a chat cancel this bad boy." buttons {"No", "Yes"} default button 2)
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else
    display dialog "Automator will snooze for 5 minutes" buttons {"Snooze"} default button 1 giving up after 10
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end if
end repeat

Applescript: display dialog while doing shell script

Hello there,
I'm making an applescript app for my company, and had a question.
The functionallity of the app is working great, but there is a certain step which can take up to several minutes.
This can give the user the feeling that nothing is happening and things are stuck.
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Display Dialog button misbehavior

-- This is not an earth-shattering matter, but I've wondered if others have encountered some inconsistent button behavior with 'Display dialog'
-- For example, consider the following, which wasn't misbehaving when I posted this
display dialog "Go" buttons {"OK", "Quit"} default button 1 cancel button 2
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-- I've tried using the button name rather than number (no difference).
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-- This is something I've observed on and off for months, but have never really pursued it.
-- I've found nothing about the affected displays that seems unusual or atypical.
-- I'm not expecting a work-around (although that would be great), just wondering if others see this.
--TIA

The simplest way to do this is to create a stay-open applescript application with the following code:
on quit
          display dialog "Please Backup Your Data
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          end if
end quit
and then run it at startup. when the user tries to logout, the on quit handler will run and the program won't quit unless they choose logout; otherwise the program won't quit and the logout will be canceled.

Applescript buttons returned from display dialog

Hi!
I have been learning Applescript for about a month and found the following issue which I thought was an easy implementation.
On the "text returned" I get the error condition described. Do not understand!
Any help would be appreciated.
display dialog ("ENTER COMPANY NAME") with title ("TOTAL SHARE SPECIFICATION")
buttons {"Cancel", "Company"} default button "Company" default answer ""
set BUTTON_Returned to button returned of the result
set CompanyName to text returned of the result
error "Can’t get text returned of \"Company\"." number -1728 from text returned of "Company"
MacBook 6.1 OS X Yosemite Vn 10.10.1
Script Editor Vn. 2.7 (176)
Applescript 2.4
Regards

No question that Applescript can be frustrating to learn. Many things about it have to be figured out by trial and error and when dealing with scripting applications all bets are off. The application designer can pretty much do as they want so what works in one app might not work in another even though you are using the same and correct applescript
I find Introduction to AppleScript Language Guide by Apple to be a good source of answers and usually always have it open when I'm scripting for quick reference.
Spend some time getting familiar with the script editor. It is intelligent and can usually steer you in the right direction when it comes to debugging. Especially get use to and pay attention to the colors it assigns to items in your script.
For example in your original script notice the colors of Button_Returned and CompanyName (your variables) and compare those to result and button returned. Also notice how text returned is a different color from button returned even though both are essentially the same thing. This is an indication that something is not right and it is where the error message occurred. (for a list of the default colors used open the Script Editors preferences and look at the Formatting tab).
Notice also how the editor formats your scripts, again the way the script gets formatted can tell you a lot if there is an error.
Finally the error messages while cryptic can offer some clues. In your case the error message was
error "Can’t get text returned of \"Company\"." number -1728 from text returned of "Company"
generated by the line
set CompanyName to text returned of the result
The last part of the error message is essentially the line that caused the error after evaluation. So here result evaluated to “Company” which doesn't seem right, display dialog returns a record.
Finally there is the log statement which will print its value to the log window
Hope this helps
regards

Applescript & Automator- display dialog title

I'm trying to make an Automator service. For one of the steps I would like to use an Applescript that looks something like the one below.
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When I run this script from Applescript Editor I get no trouble.
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Test the script in the AppleScript Editor until you resolve the issue. Alternatively, post to the AppleScript forum under OS X Technologies.

Display dialog in applescript

Using the 'Display Dialog command with default answer "" returns two results; Button pressed and text.
I want to isolate the text to use in an application. Does anybody know the syntax to allow me to do this. until upgrade to Mavericks the text appears to have been the default return, now its the button.
Thanks

For those of you who may be experiencing the same problem I have manged to resolve the issue with the following lines:
Set mvar to (display dialog "add data" default answer "")
set mvar to text returned of mvar
This leave mvar with the text only to be used in an application etc, in my case numbers.
refer to page 161 of the Applescript Language Guide

AppleScript Newbie - Display dialog box when quitting an application

Hello.
I was wondering if it's possible to write a script that displays a dialog box (in this case one saying "BACK UP!!!!") everytime i quit Final Draft.
Thanks.
F.

A regular AppleScript does not have the ability to get system notifications, so you would have to do something like have the script continually check (poll) for applications that are running. A Cocoa-AppleScript does have the ability to do Cocoa-y stuff such as register for system notifications, so you can create a new applet (AppleScript Editor > File > New from Template > Cocoa-AppleScript Applet), paste in the following, and save it as an application (uncheck the option to show the startup screen):
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tell current application's NSWorkspace's sharedWorkspace's notificationCenter
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on appQuit_(aNotification) -- an application quit
# aNotification's userInfo record contains an NSRunningApplication instance that we can get properties from
set theApplication to (aNotification's userInfo's NSWorkspaceApplicationKey's localizedName()) as text
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tell current application -- me
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When the application is run it will sit there and receive notifications when other applications quit, and checks to see if it was the application you want.

Display dialog w/ applescript and xcode why so different

Hi all
Having an issue with a dialog box in xcode
In AS editor I have a long dialog box but xcode only shows half the message
display dialog "line 1
line 2
line 3
line 4
line 5
line 6
line 7"
For some reason applescript shows the whole message where as xcode only shows the first 2 lines and cuts off the rest.
Why is that?
How can I fix this?
I need to display no less then 7 lines in the dialog

Never mind I figured it out
tell app "finder"
activate
tell app "system events" to display dialog "1
2
3
4
5
6
7
end tell
----

Font rendering issue / Mountain Lion / non Apple LCD display

Hello
This font rendering issue or problem is probably well know by Apple crew too but nobody has solved it yet. Only poor solution are available such as try to adjust manually font rendering by writin some scripts concerning anti alias levels...they really dont solve the problem.
Could Apple bring us solution to this by developing or updating Mountain Lion?
So what is the problem: font rendering is very poor in Mountain Lion when using non Apple LCD. For example Fujitsu SL27T-1 LED (LCD displa) shows fonts very nice way in Windows but in Mac OS ML does not. Somebody told me that its about software vs. hardware rendering. Dont know about that but could you bring me the solution which is not advising me to buy Apple display (which is five times more expensive than other manufactures displays).
Br
M. Leino

just want to add that overall fonts look blurry and they are not very sharp.

Display Dialog with Hidden Answer

Now Im trying to use a hidden answer dialog to get a password and pass it to the next step in my Automator Application. The code I have so far is:
on run {input, parameters}
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I get the automator error "Syntax Error. Expected end of line, etc. But found identifier."
Any ideas?

Automator has its own variation of several things such as display dialog - you can see the terminology provided by looking at Automator's scripting dictionary. The Automator version of display dialog doesn't have a hidden answer parameter, so one workaround is to use something like System Events, which will wind up using the regular StandardAdditions version:
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How do I use Display Dialog to get back a date?

Can anyone tell me how to use Display Dialog to get back a date?
I am using the following code that does not work. It does not accept anything. And I have searched high and low for an answer to my question and found nothing.
repeat
       display dialog "When should I remind you (date)?" default answer ""
       try
             if the text returned of the result is not "" then
                    set the requested_text to the date returned of the result as date
                    exit repeat
            end if
       on error
           beep
end try
endrepeat
display dialog requested_text
The code is based on what I found in AppleScript 1-2-3 (page 300). It shows examples for getting text and numbers but not one for dates.
For what it is worth, my goal is to create a script that will convert an email from Evernote into an iCal Reminder. To do so, I want to ask the user (myself) for the reminder's date and time. I am assuming I need to ask for each separately. I also assume that once I get the date and time for the reminder, it should be relatively straightforward to 'make' a 'todo' with an alarm.
Thanks in advance.
-David

Hi David,
Try this:
repeat
    set theCurrentDate to current date
    display dialog "When should I remind you (date)?" default answer (date string of theCurrentDate & space & time string of theCurrentDate)
    set theText to text returned of result
    try
        if theText is not "" then
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    on error
        beep
    end try
end repeat
display dialog (date string of theDate & space & time string of theDate)
You might also have a look at this page of the AppleScript Language Guide.
Message was edited by: Pierre L.

Page 741 Step # 12 : editEmployee.jsff 's dialog remains opened / rendered

I am using JDeveloper 11.1.1.5.
This post is regarding "Oracle JDeveloper Handbook",
Chapter 20 subsection entitled "Fix The Popup Behavior",
page 741, Step # 12...
Running templateTest.jspx displays all the records... I can scroll through all of them.
Then step 12, when I click the tuhraTrainTemplate.jspx 's "Finish" button,
the editEmployee.jsff 's popup does indeed close.
HOWEVER, the editEmployee.jsff 's dialog remains opened / rendered.
This dialog is a child of the popup.
This dialog's Title is "Manage Employee Images".
This dialog is supposed to close according to step # 12.
SOMEWHAT RELATED (and background) INFORMATION:
I tried reproducing the (above) dialog problem by downloading www.tuhra.com 's C20-II.zip
(since the problem cited above is very near the end of Chapter 20 section 2).
The C20-II.zip templateTest.jspx runs on my JDeveloper 11.1.1.5 and renders.
HOWEVER, no records are displayed (and no anomalies / exceptions appear in the integrated weblogic log window).
On a positive note, clicking the "Manage Images" command link produces the
popup and clicking the "Finish" button closes both the popup and the dialog.
For C20-I.zip, templateTest.jspx runs on my JDeveloper 11.1.1.5 and renders.
HOWEVER, no records are displayed (and no anomalies / exceptions appear in the integrated weblogic log window).
If others are also seeing no records displayed, that could be useful information (but a different issue).
For C19-V.zip, templateTest.jspx runs on my JDeveloper 11.1.1.5 and renders...
AND the records are displayed and I can scroll through all of them... all seems well.
NOTE:
Since I started "Developing Developing The Sample Application" on page 567,
I have been using Oracle Database 11g Express the whole time.
When peaking at www.tuhra.com downloadable applications (available after each section),
I just remove the existing DB connection and create a new one for " XE ", express edition.
Edited by: 818167 on Jul 17, 2011 6:05 PM

Solved:
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Applescript Display Dialog Default Answer Rendering Issue

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