Referencing an application indirectly

Scripting Forums AppleScriptObjC and Xcode
#1

I have a collection of Photoshop Actions that I need to update. Unfortunately, Adobe keeps changing the name of the application, so every year I have to modify and recompile all 93 actions and, honestly, it’s tedious.

Ideally, I’d like to just store the name of the application in a text file somewhere, load it into a variable and then use that variable in all my tell blocks instead of the hard-coded name. As you may already know “ and which I just found out “ this doesn’t work. Any suggestions for a work-around?

#2

Address apps by id rather than name. It’s generally better in scripts you distribute for a variety of reasons. So:

tell application id "com.adobe.Photoshop"
#3

Thanks Shane, that works great. I didn’t realize you could do that.

However, I also didn’t realize that I’m still screwed by the plist file, which needs to have the application name in it. I can easily batch change those with BBEdit, but I still have to re-compile everything. Can you think of any way to make that bit independent of Application name changes?

Thanks! This is very helpful!

#4

Can you just say Photoshop in the property list file?