Comments on: Toggle Calendar Focus

By: Daniel Jalkut

Daniel Jalkut — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 13:18:40 +0000

Hi Chris – interesting stuff. Yeah, it sounds like it would be a multi-phase scripting challenge. I’m guessing it could be done but would require some careful experimentation with how to script the various UI elements.

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 07:11:12 +0000

Daniel, There is a Calendars folder on older iPods. One can Export from Calendar.app to that folder (or anywhere for that matter). In Calendar, you select the calendar you want to export, then select File->Export->Export… Finally you get a standard Save dialog. I haven’t a clue how to use System Events to do all that.

By: Daniel Jalkut

Daniel Jalkut — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 05:18:40 +0000

Chris – Unfortunately I don’t know anything about the export to iPod features of iTunes or Calendar.

Sergesouszero – glad to hear it works well for you!

By: Sergesouszero

Sergesouszero — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 03:02:32 +0000

Works great ! Thanks Daniel !

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 00:29:49 +0000

Daniel, you’re a lot more adept at coaxing useful functionality out of System Events than I’ll ever be. I tried, and failed miserably at writing an AppleScript that could step through each of my calendars and export it to my 5G iPod nano. (Why? iTunes 11 removed that useful feature.)

Do you have any idea whether System Events can navigate through the overly complex Export command in Calendar, and whether that could be tied back to your Calendar focus script?

By: Rob

Rob — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 15:51:54 +0000

I tried running getAppInterface on iCal, but it doesn’t give me anything inside the Calendars button (i.e. the little drop-down window that appears below the button when clicked)… *sigh*

By: Daniel Jalkut

Daniel Jalkut — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 15:14:36 +0000

Hi Rob – unfortunately that must be it – I only tested the script myself on 10.8 with Calendar.app. I suspect it could be adjusted to work on 10.7, but I don’t have a handy test machine at the moment.

This is the weakness of the “fragile” GUI scripting solutions. They rely upon very specific structural organization of the UI. For this reason, the script will probably also stop working when and if Apple significally updates the UI of Calendar.app.

By: Rob

Rob — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 15:10:26 +0000

I tried editing “Calendar” to “iCal” and then got this error:

Error Number:System Events got an error: Can’t get scroll area 1 of splitter group 1 of splitter group 1 of splitter group 1 of window 1 of application process “iCal”. Invalid index.
-1719

I’ll look a bit more. Is the script 10.7.x compatible or is it only 10.8?

Rob

By: Rob

Rob — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 15:07:24 +0000

Whoops… Well, I tried it out and got this error:

Error Number:System Events got an error: Can’t get application process “Calendar”.
-1728

BTW, I have upwards of 50 calendars. About half are delegates from google. I collect these calendars in order to include them in a weekly event email that is automatically generated via a perl script which parses them. The calendars are regional, so there are a lot of them.

Your script promises to be very useful to me because I prefer the month view and now that iCal doesn’t show events in 2 columns for each date, I am frequently forced to leave the month view to view all of a day’s events, which I find rather jarring.

Rob

By: Rob

Rob — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 15:02:06 +0000

Awesome. I’m going to give this a try. I’ve been using FastScripts for awhile now BTW. Very nice.