Why Does AppleScript Fail With Google Earth?

My pleasure. We should share the cake 😝

I will file a bug report to Lemkesoft as well. He's usually pretty good at fixing things.

{latitude:51.3950110002, longitude:-2.386148000006, distance:1000.00012277434, tilt:0.0, azimuth:-4.30170020667941E-12}

Enjoy.

(Actually it's from last August, and if we hadn't already eaten it, it would be rather stale by now)

I reported this to Lemkesoft and had a very swift response from Thorsten Lemke saying it's a bug in Google Earth and happens with other applications as well.

It does looks as though AppleScripting is a bit broken in Google Earth.

tell application "Google Earth" to display dialog (latitude of (GetViewInfo))

works once, then repeatedly returns an error (can't get latitude of missing value) until I restart Google Earth. Then it works once, then fails again.

Looks like I was wrong about Graphic Converter being the culprit.

Here's a thing. I quit Google Earth, and then ran

tell application "Google Earth" to getcurrentversion

Google Earth launched, and I can now repeatedly change view in Google Earth and run getviewinfo.

Buadhai wrote:

AppleScript and Google Earth work fine for other users on this machine. It only fails on my account.

I just downloaded Google Earth to test it on my machine. No problems here.

I think the clue to your problem is in the quote above. Something else is running interference.

Usual first step to try to isolate the problem is to remove everything from Login Items in  > System Prefs > Users & Groups, then restart your mac and test.

If that doesn't help, try removing the content of your user ~/Library/Internet Plug-ins to a temp folder on your desktop, restart again and test.

Still no joy, move everything out of ~/Library/Caches to another temp folder on your desktop, restart and test.

Then again, have you tried HDs experiment?

It does looks as though AppleScripting is a bit broken in Google Earth.

tell application "Google Earth" to display dialog (latitude of (GetViewInfo))

works once, then repeatedly returns an error (can't get latitude of missing value) until I restart Google Earth. Then it works once, then fails again.

Looks like I was wrong about Graphic Converter being the culprit.

I only get that error if no location has been set (i.e., you're looking at the whole earth rather than a particular latitude). Note that causing Google Earth to run by executing the command returns the value '0' the first time, and 'missing value' the second time; i.e, there's no value set the latitude of view info.

Once I actually move to a location (type anything in the search bar), it works correctly every time, repeatedly on the same location or for every change of location.

You still seem to be overlooking the most pertinent fact, if you don't mind my saying so - the problem appears to be peculiar to you (and perhaps HD...), which suggests its something on your system.

In your first post you said it didn't affect other users on the same computer, then at the end of page 1 you said it occurs in a test account. I'm not sure how to resolve that contradiction, but be aware things you do in your user account can affect system settings, which can in turn have an impact even on new user accounts.

I think the next thing I'd try in your shoes is starting up in safe mode and seeing whether the problem still occurs there.

You might also have a scroll through what's in these folders that looks unfamiliar (note: none of these refer to your user account) and which does NOT begin with the prefix com.apple.

[hard disk]/Library/Caches

[hard disk]/Library/LaunchAgents

[hard disk]/Library/LaunchDaemons

[hard disk]/Library/StartupItems

[hard disk]/System/Library/Internet Plug-ins

When he said it didn't affect other users, that was because, up to that point, he hadn't been using Graphic Converter on those accounts.