Using AppleScript to launch an application on a different machine

Hi there,
I'm trying to use AppleScript to enable a couple of my Macs to talk to each other.
On one machine, I want to use this script:
tell application "Finder" of machine "eppc://user:[email protected]"
launch application "Rivet" of machine "eppc://user:[email protected]"
end tell
to have the other machine launch Rivet, a video server that I can access from the PS3/iPhone/iPad
everything seems to work without issue (i.e. no errors), except it doesn't do anything.
I see a line written to the console on "helium":
9/23/10 18:48:30 com.apple.AEServer[3535] launchproxy[3535]: /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/AE.framework/Versi ons/A/Support/AEServer: Connection from: xxx:xxx:xxx:xxx:xxx:xxx%en0 on port: 60571
every time I run the script on the other machine, but, like I said, nothing else happens.

After much searching and trial and error I finally discoverd Hiroto's suggestion from way back in 2001. It is the only solution I have found that actually works to launch/activate any application on a remote Mac using an applescript on a local Mac.
I have one Mac Mini running household control applications Indigo and iRed. I wanted to use embedded AppleScripts in those applications to launch and control PandoraBoy on another MacMini that I use as a media center. I discovered that you cannot activate an application on a remote Mac unless it's already running. (Only God and Apple know why!) And, of course, if you want to launch and application--it's usually NOT running!
But the following works:
set remoteMachine to "eppc://RemoteMachineName:[email protected]"
tell application "Finder" of machine remoteMachine
open ("/Applications/PandoraBoy.app" as POSIX file as alias)
end tell
THANK YOU HIROTO!!!
Once the remote app is actually launched/activated you can then send AppleScript commands to it as follows:
set remoteMachine to "eppc://RemoteMachineName:[email protected]"
using terms from application "PandoraBoy"
tell application "pandoraboy" of machine remoteMachine
playpause
end tell
end using terms from
I have also learned that the application to be controlled on the remote machine must also be present on the local machine and "using terms from" must also be used in the control script for this to work.

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Hi
Pierre Igot wrote:
Am I correct in assuming that this means that what I wanted could not just be achieved with AppleScript and required a Perl script?
Message was edited by: Pierre Igot
A smart folder is an XML file (PLIST), you can edit it in many ways.
It's possible with other shell commands (sed or awk).
But perl works seamlessly with extended characters (ASCII > 127)
Also it's possible with AppleScript commands (open for access, read, write, close access), or with *property list file* in System events
But it requires more lines of code.
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global a_text
set smartFolder to "/Users/jack/Library/Saved Searches/Recherche dans “Bureau”.savedSearch"
set a_text to text returned of (display dialog "Enter a phrase to search" default answer "")
if a_text contains """ then
set a_text to findAndReplace(""", "\"", a_text)
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set TheXML to property list file smartFolder
repeat with i in (get property list items of contents of TheXML)
set t_name to name of i
if t_name is "RawQuery" then
tell i to set value to my replace_text(get value)
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activate
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set x to the offset of "kMDItemTextContent==" in t
set L to length of t
repeat with i from L to 1 by -1
if character i of t = """ then
set y to i
exit repeat
end if
end repeat
return (text 1 thru (x + 20) of t) & a_text & (text y thru -1 of t)
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set ditd to text item delimiters
set text item delimiters to tofind
set t to text items of t
set text item delimiters to toreplace
set t to t as string
set text item delimiters to ditd
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