Applescript to check for a selection, then do something

[Oliver Taylor]

Is there a way to attach an applescript to a menu-item that checks to see if there's a selection?

I imagine it would go:

- Is there a selection?

+ if yes: trigger the menu item

+ if no: select the current word/line - then trigger the menu item.

Perhaps there's no need to attach it to the menu-item… maybe it's just a script that checks-for/makes a selection, then calls a specified menu-item.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Steve Kalkwarf]

On Feb 1, 2012, at 1:32 AM, Oliver Taylor wrote:

> Is there a way to attach an applescript to a menu-item that checks to see if there's a selection?

Yes, but it might be cleaner to solve your problem in a different way.

What, specifically, are you trying to do?

Steve

[Kendall Conrad]

Yes, you can check the length of the selection to see if anything is
connected and surround that with an if statement. I do it in a script
that I run.

[Christopher Stone]

On Feb 1, 1:32 am, Oliver Taylor <olivertay...@me.com> wrote:

Is there a way to attach an applescript to a menu-item that checks to see if there's a selection?

On Feb 01, 2012, at 14:32, Kendall Conrad wrote:

Yes, you can check the length of the selection to see if anything is connected and surround that with an if statement. I do it in a script that I run.

______________________________________________________________________

Yes, you can determine quite a bit about the selection:

tell application "BBEdit"

tell front text window

set selectionProperties to properties of (selection)

end tell

end tell

{

container:project window 1 of application "BBEdit", 

contents:"know", 

length:4, 

characterOffset:9, 

startLine:1, 

endLine:1, 

startColumn:9, 

endColumn:13, 

startDisplayLine:1, 

endDisplayLine:1

}

But as Steve mentioned Oliver needs to tell us a little more about what he wants to do, so we can better help him.

--

Best Regards,

Chris

[Oliver Taylor]

BBedit's text filters, applescripts, etc. act on a selection - if available - and fall-back to acting on the entire document. In some cases this is less than desirable. Sometimes you want to fall-back to the current word or line, or paragraph. I wanted to create an Applescript that would check for a selection and if there is none make one, then trigger the text-filter, script, etc.

Thanks to Mr Stone, here's an example:

tell application "BBEdit"

tell front text window

if length of selection = 0 then

tell application "BBEdit"

tell text window 1

select line (startLine of selection)

end tell

change case selection of text window 1 making raise case with replacing target

end tell

else

tell application "BBEdit"

change case selection of text window 1 making raise case with replacing target

end tell

end if

end tell

end tell

[Oliver Taylor]

Thank you Mr Stone, as always.