how to activate window, not app?

BTW, my most recent suggestion (all of my suggestions in this thread, in fact) were worked out in 10.4.11. But I see that both you and Pierre L. are using 10.6.1. I have that, but have yet to install it on my Intel machine, so I can't do any testing with it. Although I don't know of anything specific,
conceivably there are issues that would make my suggestions incompatible. So let me know what happens, + or -.

Incidentally, the whole intent of the two-app approach is to once and for all take the focus away from the script editor.

"I was also trying to say that it seems impossible to me, using AppleScript (and even GUI scripting), to activate any application without automatically bringing all of its windows to the front."

Just curious. Did you try the "two-script" or "two-app" approach? One might argue that the "invisible" Terminal window(s) is indeed "activated, but would it make a difference?

(I still don't know whether the two scripts will execute in 10.6.1. If they don't, it's probably has something to do with getting the PID of the first script.)

Message was edited by: Noaks

I did try your scripts.

Three stickies, three Terminal windows and one TextEdit window were already opened when I launched Starter_.

07 Stickies #3
06 Stickies #2
05 Stickies #1
04 Terminal #3
03 Terminal #2
02 Terminal #1
01 TextEdit

The result? A new Terminal window was created at front, but the three other Terminal windows completely disappeared without any way to retrieve them. Later on, there was the alert “AppleEvent timed out.” Still later on, when I wanted to log out, there was the alert “The variable Starter_PID is not defined.”

Btw, would it be possible for you to improve the HTML code that you use when adding examples to your posts. Using Safari, I am forced to continously scroll back and forth in order to read your posts. Just a suggestion.

Thanks very much for the information.

Second things first:

"Btw, would it be possible for you to improve the HTML code that you when you add examples to your posts. Using Safari, I amforced to continously scroll back and forth in order to read your posts. Just a suggestion."

I'm aware of the problem but just haven't found the time to really do it right. If you have a suggestion, I'll give it a try -- it couldn't be much worse.

Now to first things:

Since I've demonstrated (to myself) that the two-app approach works in 10.4.11 and 10.5.7, the issues you're seeing almost certainly have to do with 10.6.x. My guess that such issues would relate to the PID retrieval seems to be correct, but without installing 10.6, I don't know how to approach modified code. (I had similar issues when I messed up the PID retrieval with the earlier os's.) Perhaps you know a much more direct way of getting the PID of "Starter_" that would work in 10.6 –– but it's almost certainly that part of the code in "Finisher_" that's causing the problem, as getting "Starter_" to quit efficiently is crucial.

As to not being able to retrieve the original Terminal window(s), I've consistently found that quitting and then re-activating Terminal does the trick, but maybe not with the PID-retrieval errors. Another approach that works for me is:

'tell app "Terminal" to set the visible of every window whose visible is false to true'. Of course, that would have to be at the end of the script, and the script would have to execute without other errors.

I'll eventually get to 10.6.x, but I'm not particularly enthused about doing that, given all the apparent issues people seem to be encountering.

Thanks again.

Edit: Now, there you go. I didn't use any HTML code in this response, but the no-wrap issue is still there! One more thing to add to my million-item list of things I don't understand.

Message was edited by: Noaks

For what it's worth, I was able to try this approach on an Intel machine running 10.5.7, and it seemed problem-free. It may be a while before I get to 10.6.x.