Automator "Watch Me Do" using Command Down transition to AppleScript question.

Lots to digest here.

First off, I normally advocate against using UI events whenever possible. They are messy, unreliable, and generally the wrong way to go about solving a problem. Sometimes they are a necessary evil, though.

If you're determined/destined to use UI events to do this, rather than to interact directly with the app (and Safari has an above-average (for Apple) AppleScript dictionary, plus most page-level things can be done via JavaScript, too.

In any case, the crux of your problem is that there is no support for 'command down' (or any modifier keys for that matter) with the click command. click supports one of two parameters - an object to click, or a location on the screen. That's it.

To do what you want you need to wrap your click in the (hidden? secret? deprecated?) commands key down and key up to emulate pressing the command key before the click, and releasing the key afterwards. Finding this right incantation requires some arcane knowledge, but fortunately some of us have already paid the price for you.

For the record I have no idea why you are passing a text representation of your click command to a run script command. Why don't you just run it directly?

tell application "System Events"
   key down 55 -- ssshh! secret code for the command key
   click static text 1 of group 75 of scroll area 2 of tab 7 of window 93 -- or whatever
   key up 55 -- release the command key!
end tell

It's possible that 55 is the incorrect number based on age/language settings/keyboard model, etc. Let me know if this doesn't work and we can dig into how to find the right number.

> The original script came from dragging the recorded commands down into a Run AppleScript window in Automator and that was just the way the recorder saw to make the required clicks.

I recognize the 'watch me do' nature of your original post. I rarely find these create viable long-term strategies.

> Can AppleScript find this on the page without all of the "scroll area2 of UI element 1 of scroll area 1..." if it knows to look for "DAAF" specifically?

It is hard to get AppleScript to interact directly with page content in Safari. The expectation is that JavaScript is used at this level. AppleScript can interact with the high-level application data, but web page content is one level removed.

You can use AppleScript to extract the page source (in HTML), and use AppleScript's text parsing capabilities to process the text (e.g. extract text data from it), but this may or may not reflect the visual content (e.g. stylesheet data, JavaScript actions, etc.). If the page content is pretty static, though, then this may be an easier path.

For example, this script will grab the HTML source of the front document and grab all the text between the two keywords:

set firstKeyword to "DAAF"
set secondKeyword to "D2BG"

tell application "Safari"
	-- get the raw HTML of the front document
	set thePageContent to source of document 1
	set {oldTID, my text item delimiters} to {my text item delimiters, firstKeyword}
	text item 2 of text items of thePageContent
	set myText to text item 2 of text items of thePageContent
	set my text item delimiters to secondKeyword
	set myText to text item 1 of text items of myText
	set my text item delimiters to oldTID
	return myText
	
end tell

This completely avoids UI scripting and doesn't care about groups, scroll areas, etc., etc. and is a better way of leveraging AppleScript.