New AppleScript command in KN4 - woohoo!

Question

It's only one addition, but it makes all the difference.
You can now set the body text of a slide via AppleScript. It doesn't sound like much, but it means we can now create 'complete' presentations via scripting, making my attempts at an Aperture to Keynote export far far easier - we can set the title of the slide to the image name, and stick whatever EXIF/IPTC info we want in the body text.
Example script:
set tBodyText to "Testing, testing!"
set tTitle to "The Scripting Daily"
tell application "Keynote"
tell front slideshow
set body of current slide to tBodyText
set title of current slide to tTitle
end tell
end tell
Ian
Message was edited by: Ian Wood

Answer 1

Hi, Ian,
Keynote (like Powerpoint) is, at root, a visually presented outline.
Choose View>Outline to reveal the "outline structure" of your slides in the left column of the page display. What you will see there (assuming your slides are not completely composed of pictures and animations), is a full outline structure of the text of your slideshow. Titles are Level 1 headings in the outline, and then each paragraph of the body text of the slides will be at whatever outline Level you made them.
The sad thing is that this outline respresentation is kept entirely internal to Keynote--despite the fact that outline structures are represented and created by many programs. So, if you wanted to make (or had a lot of) outlines in, e.g. Word or OmniOutliner or even a mind mapping program, you would be out of luck getting these outlines into Keynote to make presentations from them. And there is reason to do so--one's outlines may be repurposed in various way in one's workflow, and it is without doubt that there are many better programs in which to create and manipulate outlines than Keynote.
Similarly, if you wanted to get the outline of your presentation /out/ of Keynote. Keynote's idea of a handout is to produce thumbnails of slides--which I find entirely useless. What would be useful is being able to export the outline (e.g. in OPML format--a standard for outlines).
If your body of outlines or the place you like to work on outlines, is Word, you can work around this deficit by using Powerpoint as a go-between. To get to Keynote: open a Word outline in Powerpoint and save it, and then open that in Keynote. And for the other direction, export a Keynote presentation to Powerpoint, open in Powerpoint and save that as "Outline (RTF)" and open that in Word to get an outline Word document. You need a third-party solution to move between OPML and either of these apps.
For anyone who makes presentations with textual substance, Keynote's inability to move outline structures in and out is a glaring omission. (If you look at Steve Job's keynote presentations, they are all pictures and titles, not textual content to speak of. Maybe that is what everyone is using these things for.)
So, anyway, that is the issue I was adverting to. If Keynote gave one the least bit of access to the outline structure of the body text of a slide, one could Applescript one's way around this lack in the program, but amazingly, the only command which delivers the body text of a slide strips the outline structure off of it before you get your hands on it!
All Best,
Greg