AppleScript Help: Select all children

[Gavin Kistner]

[If you're impatient, skip to the very end for a list of summary 
questions.]

I'm great with Javascript, but new to AppleScript.

I wanted to write a script to select all descendants of the currently 
selected object(s)...but I am  stymied again and again.

I read through the OmniGraffle dictionary, and even spent time making a 
nice reference chart for it. (Unfortunately, using v3.0 pro I kept 
getting various reallly ugly errors. [bug report coming, omnigroup.] 
The final result, after various restarts, copy/paste to a new document, 
copy/paste text out of corrupted objects and into copies, looks correct 
in OG but the exported PDF crashes Preview and shows ugly boxes in 
Acrobat 5.0. [I even tried remaking the objects which look wrong in 
Acrobat, but that only added another to the list of broken-looking 
ones.] If you want to see it, you can download the 77k OG3Pro file 
http://phrogz.net/tmp/OmniGraffle%20AS%20Classes.graffle or the 418k 
PNG http://phrogz.net/tmp/OmniGraffle%20AS%20Classes.png )

ANYhow...

I'm failing to get major pieces of this script to work using either 
AppleScript or JavaScript. Some failed test code snippets that I don't 
understand why they don't work:

//JavaScript
var og = MacOS.appBySignature("OGfl");
og.documents[0].pages[0].solids;
og.documents[0].pages[0].graphics;
og.documents[0].pages[0].shapes;
og.documents[0].pages[0].layers[0].graphics;
og.documents[0].pages[0].layers[0].solids;
og.documents[0].pages[0].layers[0].shapes;
//every one of the above returns 'null', even though
//there are 7 boxes (with text) connected by 6 lines

--AppleScript
tell application "OmniGraffle Professional"
	the count of graphics of the first layer of the first document
	--"OmniGraffle Professional got an error: NSCannotCreateScriptCommand"
end tell

tell the front window of application "OmniGraffle Professional"
	count of selection -- this works
	the first item of selection -- this fails...doesn't like 'item' here
end tell


The following might be close to working, but:
a) I don't know how to actually select the object (adding it to the 
collection doesn't work)
b) it's not recursing as it ought (I end up with 3 items in my array 
rather than 7...maybe this JS engine is passing arrays by value and not 
reference...and attempts to use a global array end up having it not 
recognized inside the child functions)


var og = MacOS.appBySignature("OGfl");
SelectChildrenOfSelected();

function SelectChildrenOfSelected(){
	og._strict=false;
	var objsToSelect=[];
	var selectedObjs = og.windows.first.selection;
	for (var i=0,len= selectedObjs.length;i<len;i++){
		SelectChildrenOf(selectedObjs[i],objsToSelect);
	}
	for (var i=0,len=obsToSelect.length;i<len;i++){
		var objToSelect = objsToSelect[i];
		//WHAT DO I DO HERE? THE FOLLOWING GIVES AN ERROR
		selectedObjs[selectedObjs.length]=objToSelect;
	}
}

function SelectChildrenOf(obj,arrayTracker){
	if (obj==null) return;
	arrayTracker[arrayTracker.length]=obj;
	for (var j=0,len2=obj.outgoing_lines.length;j<len2;j++){
		SelectChildrenOf(obj.outgoing_lines[j].destination,arrayTracker);
	}
}




SO...
1) Using JS or AS -- how do I select an object?

2) (If you only know AS): why are the sample AS scripts above giving an 
error?

3) Using AS, how do I get at the individual items in the selection?

4) How would I get the text contents of a single selected non-grouped 
object? (My JS tests on properties of a single object object inside the 
'selection' array seems to indicate that it is not of class 
'solid'...but that's the only class I see with a .text property other 
than label.)

5) [For OmniGroup] Having a unique class called 'selection', with a 
plural of 'selection', which has the exact same properties as the 
'graphic' class feels really bizarre. Couldn't there be some better way 
in AS of expressing a collection of selected items?