"macro" find&replace for Pages

+PAX

Greetings again. Many thanks for both of your suggestions.

@Tom: I didn't think of that all! Yet, due to the quantity and columns, etc, I can't see that as a viable option.

@Peter: I've seen those listed on some other similar posts. Due to the content, I didn't think it would work for what I need. Guess I'll have to check them out now. At the moment, all three of those things are completely foreign to me: Grep, BBEdit, and nisus.

Most of the original docs, if not all, were created in QuarkXPress. I hate that program just as much as windows, and for the same reasons. The conversion doesn't need to take place in pages. It's still mind-boggling to me that something like this is so complicated on a Mac. It's got to be the only thing that you need a doctorate to accomplish on a Mac! Such is life.

In the meantime, I'm certainly open to any other suggestions!

Many many thanks.

I couldn't agree with you more about the homegrown font thing and loosing data forever. This is why we're in the situation that we're in.

There are several fonts. The principal one used is called Capella.

The monk who developed/modified the fonts did, however, do something intelligent. The same characters were always used. So the NULL symbol always produces the same Lithuanian character.

Even with the meta font which he modified, he did the same thing. Same characters were replaced with the same Lithuanian ones. This is why I am really in need of making some kind of script. It's near impossible to use the documents he created. Most everyone else is using Linux. I can use the files, but can't copy and paste text, because if the font is changed, then it's illegible. And plus, we have a brother who's loosing his eyesight. The screen-reader won't read the documents correctly.

+PAX

I've hit the jackpot! Well, at least it looks that way. First, many thanks for your help and interest!!

@Peter: I agree. Am also fascinated by OCR software for what you mention and so much more!

@Tom: thanks for the link to that other discussion. I don't seem to be a genius when it comes to finding stuff on the internet. But perhpas for once, I hit something good!!

I don't remember what I googled... but at macscripter.net, I came across this script:

tell application "Pages"

set toFind to"good"

set toReplace to"bad"

set theText to contents of document 1

set astid to AppleScript's text item delimiters

set AppleScript's text item delimiters to toFind

set textItems to theText's text items

set AppleScript's text item delimiters to toReplace

tell textItems toset editedText tobeginning & toReplace & rest

set AppleScript's text item delimiters to astid

set text of document 1 to editedText

endtell

You know what, IT WORKS!!! So what I did was copy and paste this same script for each item I need to replace. Just the Lithuanian letters are 18, normal case and capitals. When I tried a longer text, I discovered that there is much much more that needs to be added. The reasons is due to how the font was designed and certainly not in the scope of this post.

Now, why on Earth is not possible to have found this information somewhere from Apple?? Perhaps we'll never know. But at any rate, I can confirm that that this script will allow an automated find and replace all in Pages'09.

Next task: getting the script to be accessible from a menu item.

God bless!!

Fabulous! Thanks so much!!