[texworks] SCRIPTING: get current poppler page number

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 21 oct. 2010 à 05:05, Paul A Norman a écrit :

> P.S.
> http://livedocs.adobe.com/acrobat_sdk/9.1/Acrobat9_1_HTMLHelp/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=Acrobat9_HTMLHelp&file=IAC_API_AppleEvtObjects.105.1.html#1515777
> 
> The adobe page for the Apple Events information, is virtually empty.
> 
> On 21 October 2010 15:40, Paul A Norman <paul.a.norman at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
> 
>> APPLE MAC
>> 
>>  "When opening a PDF document with an Apple Event on a Macintosh
>> operating system,
>>  you can optionally pass the PDF Open parameters."
>> 
>> What does this mean to a Mac user please? - i.e. what is an "Apple Event"

I'm only guessing here, having never done any scripting myself, but I think Apple Event in this sense relates to AppleScript, the Mac scripting language:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleScript
http://www.macosxautomation.com/applescript/learn.html

Acrobat doesn't support AppleScript in itself, it seems to have built its scripting support around JavaScript:

http://livedocs.adobe.com/acrobat_sdk/9.1/Acrobat9_1_HTMLHelp/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=Acrobat9_HTMLHelp&file=JavaScript_SectionPage.70.1.html

However, it seems that JavaScript is used to execute scripts inside Acrobat, not to launch Acrobat. And you're quite right, whatever Adobe says about interapplication communication API relates to MS Visual Basic, not Apple Script, with the page on interapp communication

http://livedocs.adobe.com/acrobat_sdk/9.1/Acrobat9_1_HTMLHelp/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=Acrobat9_HTMLHelp&file=JavaScript_SectionPage.70.1.html

leading to the empty page you mentioned on Apple Events support.

Two more things:

- The extract you gave seems to imply that it's possible to call Acrobat through an AppleScript and pass on the PDF Open parameters from

http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/acrobat/sdk/pdf/pdf_creation_apis_and_specs/PDFOpenParameters.pdf

inside the Apple Script. Googling for "applescript acrobat" returns

http://dotclue.org/archives/002542.html

which appears as an example of combining Acrobat and AppleScript.

- Generally, and I realize this is a controversial topic, Adobe apps on the Mac are in my experience second thoughts, hasty ports, of Windows applications. They work like Windows apps, not Mac apps, and are very badly optimized, often using up 95% of the CPU with no particular reason, blocking the current app sometimes for minutes and not letting the user switch gracefully to other applications as apps normally do, and at times crashing. I've experienced this repeatedly over more than a decade with successive versions of Illustrator, Reader/Acrobat and Flash Player. Basically you use an Adobe app or plug-in on the Mac because you have to, not because you enjoy to.

All this to say that that lack of OS X scripting support in Acrobat, if that is indeed the case, would not come out as a surprise.

Bruno Voisin