AppleScript: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition

A Day in the Life

Although I know that FrameMaker is scriptable, I have no idea how to script it. I haven't the slightest notion how to talk to FrameMaker, using AppleScript, about the illustrations in my manuscript. So the first thing I need to do is to try to find this out.

Caught in the Web of Words

My starting place, as with any new AppleScript programming task, is the dictionary of the application I'm going to be talking to, where I examine the terminology I can use in speaking to this application with AppleScript. To see FrameMaker's dictionary, I start up Apple's Script Editor, open the Library window, add FrameMaker to the library, and double-click its icon in the Library window. The dictionary opens, as shown in Figure A-1.

This is a massive document and, to the untrained eye (or even to the trained eye), largely incomprehensible. What are we looking for here? Basically, I'd like to know whether FrameMaker gives me a way to talk about illustrations. To find out, I open each of the headings on the left, and under each heading I study its classes. What I'm trying to find out is what things FrameMaker knows about, so that I can guess which of those things is likely to be most useful for the problem I'm facing. In particular, I'd like to find a class that stands a chance of being what FrameMaker thinks my illustrations are.

The fact is, however, that I don't see anything that looks promising. The trouble is that I don't really understand what an illustration is, in FrameMaker's ...