Applescript Display Dialog Default Answer Rendering Issue

Question

Level 1

0 points

Applescript Display Dialog Default Answer Rendering Issue

After I installed Lion, I started having issues with Applescript rendering a dialog with a textbox.

This is the sort of thing I end up seeing:

The text box in the dialog doesn't render properly, and it's not possible to enter anything into it. I've played with the display dialog parameters but it doesn't matter if I give an empty string for the default answer or other text, the behaviour is always the same.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what the issue might be? I suspect I might need to reinstall Lion, but I'm not sure that's even going to clear up the issue.

Thanks in advance.

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Posted on Aug 3, 2011 5:32 PM

Reply

Answer 1

andovar Author

Level 1

0 points

Aug 3, 2011 5:34 PM in response to andovar

Just wanted to add that the post says Mac OS X (10.5.5) which it must have got from my user settings or something. This is an issue in 10.7 that didn't exist for my previously.

Reply

Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,084 points

Aug 3, 2011 6:11 PM in response to andovar

It works fine on mine. I was trying to figure out exactly what it was displaying as that might give a clue as to what is corrupted, but I can't figure it out.

Reply

Answer 3

andovar Author

Level 1

0 points

Aug 3, 2011 8:29 PM in response to andovar

This may be an additional clue, but it's hard to say. If I click on the OK button, I get this error response:

error "An error of type -30581 has occurred." number -30581

I've googled it, but can't find anything to suggest what -30581 might mean.

Reply

Answer 4

Aug 12, 2011 1:31 PM in response to andovar

I get Identical bad results when running from the disk I updated from Snow Leopard to Lion.

When I run the script from a disk with a clean install of Lion, text boxes appear as they should.

Something appears to have carried over from Snow Leopard that is causing problems.

Reply

Answer 5

Aug 12, 2011 1:44 PM in response to PathToDesktop

I've upgraded Lion over SL and it works ok for me 😟

Reply

Answer 6

andovar Author

Level 1

0 points

Aug 12, 2011 2:04 PM in response to andovar

Had a couple other comments:

* I never had this issue with the Snow Leopard to Lion upgrade that I did on my MBP.

* On the machine where I do have the issue, I created a new user, logged in as that user, and confirmed that the problem does not exist. So cleary whatever is causing the issue is in the user settings of the user that was upgraded as part of the Snow Leopard to Lion transition. It's not a system problem per se. I don't really want to have to migrate over to a new user account. I was hoping there might be a plist file or something I could clear out and have the system rebuild it ... but I wouldn't even know where to start looking when it comes to figuring out what files are causing the issue.

Reply

Answer 7

Aug 13, 2011 4:12 PM in response to andovar

Tried replacing 'Standard Additions' osax, dumping editor prefs, dumping ALL user prefs (not recommended for faint of heart), using a different copy of Script Editor. Nothing helped.

The user account displaying the bug is an old one; likely updated continuosly from the days of Tiger or earlier.

A std account on the same drive, which merely went through the Snow Leopard -> Lion transition, does not exhibit the edit-text display bug.

So I bit the bullet, and used Migration Assistant to move to a new account on a clean install of Lion on a spare hard drive. 3.5 hours later, the Applescript edit text display bug is gone.

As far as I can tell, all docs, Apps etc. made it through intact.

If that continues to look true over the next few days, I'll try using SuperDuper! to copy the new drive back to the older, faster HD.

Perhaps some other Lion bugs'll also go away now that I've got a cleaner install.

Reply

Answer 8

andovar Author

Level 1

0 points

Aug 15, 2011 12:31 PM in response to andovar

I finally got this fixed. I probably should have done a clean install of Lion, but I didn't want to go to the trouble, so I tried reinstalling Lion over top of the existing Lion instance. That must have cleaned up whatever issues existed in the settings of the user account with the problem.

It's actually not a total surprise that that user account had issues. When I installed Lion the first time, that account didn't link in properly at first and Apple support walked me through how to log in as root and manually add the account. That allowed me to log in as that user, but I imagine that the account never fully went through the upgrade routines that would happen during a typical user account upgrade when moving from Snow Leopard to Lion. Reinstalling Lion the second time must have got that all to kick in properly and upgrade the account.

Reply