ICal scripting

Question

Hi there
It's been 2 days now that I decided to make a script for an automation of iCal, and I give up ;p.
First of all, can anyone tell me where can I find a complete reference of the iCal scripts (i.e. all the objects and methods that are scripted in iCal, like the "calendar" object).
What I want to do, is to export all my calendars to a specific location (I'm lookinf fot the export methods using applescript). Does anyone has a hint?
Thx a lot
iMac 24' 2,16GHz CodeDuo2 GeForce 7300 GT 1Gh DDR   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  

Answer 1

One problem for sure, and perhaps one other problem, too.
The first problem is you need to have an ellipsis in the name of the menu item. If you look in iCal's File menu, you'll see the menu item name is actually "Export…" with an ellipsis at the end (no spaces).
You can copy paste the ellipsis from this message. On a U.S. keyboard, you can hold the Option key and press the semicolon ( ; ) to get an ellipsis. In the Edit menu of most apps, you can choose "Special Characters…" at the bottom of the menu to show the Character Palette. Or you can show the Input Menu in the menu bar by selecting it in International Preferences in System Preferences, in the Input Menu tab. In there, the option to show the Input Menu is at the bottom of the window, and the palettes are at the top as one of the first three items in the list. The Input Menu is completely customizable by selecting anything from the list. You may also find the Keyboard Viewer useful (one of the three) to have in the Input Menu. When you press modifier keys (Command, Option, Control, Shift, or a combination) the Keyboard Viewer will show what each key will type when pressed.
As for the Character Palette, you can select one of the ellipses in this message (such as double-clicking this one: … ) and then choose from the action button in the lower left corner of the palette (button with gear and triangle) the "Show Character Selected in Application" option. (Or look in the Punctuation category, near the top, it's the eighth character for me). Then just add it to your favorites using the same action button. Double-clicking a character will insert it wherever the cursor happens to be in whatever application is currently foremost.
You can also use the zoom button (green button) in the Character Palette's title bar and it'll become very small showing only the character you have selected. Now you won't have to double-click, just single click the character.
The other thing you'll want to do is make sure you've selected "Enable access for assistive devices" in the Universal Access preferences in System Preferences. That is required when you are gui scripting with AppleScript, such as using System Events to select menu items and buttons and such.
You'll find closing the iCal window to be ineffective since it has to be open when exporting since you are using gui (graphical user interface) scripting. You'll also need to select the calendar before exporting, which will require further gui scripting since that's not an option in iCal's dictionary. You'll also need to press the "Export" button in the exporting dialog, and perhaps change the name and location if desired.
At that point, you'll probably want to post in the AppleScript forums to get more variety of help with gui scripting since this doesn't really have anything to do with Automator anymore.
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=724