Applescript? (OmniGraffle 2.0 Beta v7 Now Available)

[Greg Titus]

On Thursday, January 31, 2002, at 10:49  AM, Bruce D'Arcus wrote:
>
> I know enough about Applescript to have a sense that this new 
> functionality
> could be very useful, but not enough to know *how.*  Can someone 
> enlighten
> me?

Basically AppleScript can perform any combination of actions on a 
document that you can (if we've provided all of that functionality in 
the AppleScript dictionary -- right now we're close, but it's not 100%). 
AppleScript is great for automating repetitive tasks and for integrating 
separate applications and making them work together.

> On 1/31/02 10:53 AM, "manny at omnigroup.com" <manny at omnigroup.com> wrote:
>>   - More AppleScript support
>>        - AppleScripts can be configured on the toolbar, complete with
>>          custom icons.

If you make a Library/Application Support/OmniGraffle/Scripts folder and 
place compiled AppleScripts in that folder, then when you customize the 
toolbar in OmniGraffle, those scripts will show up in the configure list 
and you can drag them onto the toolbar and easily invoke them.

For the 2.0 final (probably for the next beta if there is one) we will 
also have a Scripts menu with these scripts as well. At the moment it 
looks like it is impossible for a Cocoa app to have a "real" 
Carbon-style scripts menu (with a script icon in the menu bar) but we'll 
see. (It's a known bug that has been reported to Apple.)

>>        - AppleScripts can be attached to individual graphics.

There's a little AppleScript editor embedded in OmniGraffle now, on the 
Link Info panel.  You can select a graphic and write AppleScript in this 
editor to attach a script to the shape.

Turn on "Show Links" in the Format menu and little script icons appear 
on the shapes with AppleScripts and little URL 'zaps' appear on shapes 
with web links. You can click these icons to open the appropriate web 
page or run the appropriate script. Alternatively, there is now a 
"Browse Links" drawing mode. Your cursor changes to the "hand" and 
shapes with active content will highlight as you move over them.

One potential use for the links is for drawing maps of web sites or 
other types of documents. (If you use OmniGraffle's framework or 
ProjectBuilder project import features, you'll notice that all of the 
boxes are now linked to the original file that the class came from, so 
you can go into browse mode and quickly open up class files you are 
interested in.)

One thing I like to use the script attachment feature for is for keeping 
track of my workflow when it gets a bit more chaotic than a nice 
hierarchical list like OmniOutliner handles. I draw a bunch of lines and 
boxes and attach a simple 'set fill color to "green"' script on the 
boxes and leave the document in the corner of the screen in browse mode. 
As I finish a task and click on each shape, it fills in green. (Note to 
AppleScripters: the attached scripts are implicitly targetted at 
whatever graphic they are attached to, so there is no need to write a 
tell block for simple scripts like this.)

You could, of course, get quite a bit more complicated with these 
scripts. I have a fun example of a "Simulate" button with a fairly long 
attached script that you can just paste onto a Graffle document that 
contains components from the new Boolean Gates palette. Click "Simulate" 
and the wires and gates start animating turning red and black to 
represent on and off states as appropriate. (Anyone remember that old 
Apple II educational game "Rocky's Boots?")

>>        - "Edit->Copy As->AppleScript" copies the current selection as
>>          AppleScript source.

A very easy and quick way to construct an AppleScript which interacts 
with Graffle is to select one or more shapes in Graffle, choose Copy As 
AppleScript, and paste into a script editor. You'll get valid 
AppleScript to recreate copies of the selected shapes, and you can 
customize your script from there.

We plan on including some example scripts with 2.0 final to do some cool 
things and show off some of the possibilities.

	--Greg
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