Draw freehand from applescript

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Level 1

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Draw freehand from applescript

I am trying to draw some freehand data to pages using applescript. I have some pixel data which I am using to create a series of line objects in my document to represent the freehand drawing. This seems to work fine however the problem is that I would like to group these objects into one. There seems to be no support in the applescript dictionary for grouping objects so I have been trying to send key commands to group the lines after creating them. Any ideas on how I can group the points into one object?

Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on May 9, 2011 9:38 AM

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Answer 1

twtwtw

Level 5

4,948 points

May 9, 2011 3:09 PM in response to allbabel

Well, more as proof-of-concept than as a perfect solution, you can do it this way:

tell application "Pages"

select every graphic of document 1 of window 1

activate

my groupMaker()

end tell

on groupMaker()

tell application "System Events"

tell process "pages"

tell document 1 of window 1

keystroke "g" using {command down, option down}

end tell

end groupMaker

You probably want more nuanced control over the selection process (unless you're always doing this in a new document), but that might require a separate GUI-scripting subroutine which I don't want to get into unless you need it.

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Answer 2

allbabel Author

Level 1

0 points

May 10, 2011 3:00 AM in response to twtwtw

Thanks, that worked. I amended it a little to group only the items I create with a unique id:

set lineId to "something"

tell application "Pages"

select (every graphic of document 1 of window 1 whose name is lineId)

activate

my groupMaker()

end tell

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