[TxMt] Re: Running an AppleScript

Tim Mansour wrote:

osascript <<-ENDSCRIPT
set title to "${TM_SELECTED_TEXT}"
if title ≠ "" then
    tell application "FileMaker Pro Advanced"
        if not (exists window "HachetteTitles") then open alias "Path:To:My:Database.fp7"
        set cell "_Search" of layout "Titles" to title
        do script "Search For Title"
        set href to cell "_Search" of layout "Titles"
        set img to cell "_thumb" of layout "Titles"
    end tell
    if href ≠ "" then set title to img & href
end if
return title
ENDSCRIPT

I know this script method works fine outside of TextMate, but no matter what I do I get errors running it inside TextMate:

31:32: syntax error: Expected “then”, etc. but found unknown token. (-2741)

I'd certainly appreciate any help diagnosing this one.

The issue here is the encoding. AppleScript will not accept UTF-8, but instead likes Mac Roman (incidentally your email is Mac Roman--I didn't realize anyone still used it in email clients. How terrible: why not use UTF-8?!). The solution here is either to pass the text through a round of iconv, or else just stick to ASCII, which in this case means using `is not` or `<>` instead of `≠`.

It's really tragic that AppleScripts can't be encoded in any kind of unicode, because it prevents users from copy/pasting filenames from the finder, and it creates all sorts of compatibility nastiness with other shell-based applications and languages.

-Jacob