Provides many features for displaying and manipulating text laid out in a defined area.

Important:  Starting in AppleScript Studio version 1.3, the text class is collapsed into the text view class. Properties you could previously access through the text class can now be accessed through the text view class. See the Version Notes section for a list of merged properties.

Figure 11-1 shows a window that contains a text view.

Figure 11-1  A text view that contains some text

You will find the text view object on the Cocoa-Text pane of Interface Builder’s Palette window. You can set many attributes for text views in Interface Builder’s Info window.

For an overview of Cocoa’s text-handling system, see the document Text System Overview.

Properties of text view objects

In addition to the properties it inherits from the view class, a text view object has these properties:

Elements of text view objects

In addition to the elements it inherits from the view class, a text view object can contain the elements listed below. Your script can access most elements with any of the key forms described in “Standard Key Forms.”

Events supported by text view objects

A text view object supports handlers that can respond to the following events:

Examples

The following statement, from the Open Panel sample application (first distributed with AppleScript Studio version 1.1), shows how to set the text of a text view. The statement actually clears the text view by setting its text to an empty string.

set contents of text view "path names" of scroll view  "path names" of window "main"  to ""

You can use the following script in Script Editor to set the text color in a text view to green. Similar script statements will work within an AppleScript Studio application script (though you won’t need the tell application block).

tell application "myTextViewApp"

    tell text view "text" of scroll view "scroller"  of window "main"

        set text color to {0, 65535, 0}

    end tell

end tell

Text-handling terminology can be a bit confusing. AppleScript Studio’s Text View suite defines the text view class, which (prior to AppleScript Studio version 1.3) inherited from the text class—starting in version 1.3, the properties of the text class were merged into text view class.

In addition, Cocoa defines the Text suite, which defines classes such as character, paragraph, text, and word, which in turn have elements such as character, paragraph, and word, and properties such as color, font, and size. The Text suite is a default suite that is available to all Cocoa applications that support scripting.

To further complicate matters, AppleScript classes such as string and Unicode text have character, paragraph, text, and word elements. In addition, if a class and a property (such as text) have the same name, use of the name within a tell statement defaults to the class.

The following script shows various operations you can perform on the text from a text view in a window. A text view is automatically enclosed in a scroll view, so the script accesses the text view through the scroll view. This script was tested with AppleScript Studio version 1.2 (and again with version 1.3) in Script Editor, but you can use similar statements in an application script (where you won’t need the tell application block). This script may include statements that do not run with earlier versions of AppleScript Studio.

For this example, the text in the text view was “This is the only sentence.” Note that you will get evaluation errors for some lines in this script if there is no text in the text view, or, for example, less than 7 characters (causing the statement character 7 of text of text view 1 to generate an error).

tell application "simple"

    tell window 1

        tell scroll view 1

            class of text of text view 1 -- text

            word 1 of text of text view 1 -- result: "This"

            set myTextObject to text of text view 1

                -- result: "This is the only sentence."

            class of myTextObject

                -- result: Unicode text

                -- In Studio version 1.1, the result is string.

            -- Next line generates error because Unicode text doesn’t

            --  have a color property

            --color of myTextObject

                -- result: Can't get color of "This is the  only sentence."

            word 1 of myTextObject -- result: "This"

            character 7 of myTextObject -- result: "s"

            character 1 of word 1 of myTextObject -- result: "T"

            set myText to contents of text view 1

                -- result: "This is the only sentence."

            class of myText -- result: Unicode text

            word 3 of myText -- result: "the"

            character 13 of myText -- result:"o"

            editable of text view 1 -- result: true (inherited from  text)

            background color of text view 1 -- result: {65535, 65535,  65535}

            set myTextRef to a reference to (text of text view 1)

                -- result: every text of text view 1 of scroll view  1

                --          of window 1 of application "simple"

            class of myTextRef -- result: text

            color of myTextRef -- result: {0, 0, 0}

            --font of myTextRef -- NSCannotCreateScriptCommandError

            contents of myTextRef

                -- result: "This is the only sentence."

            size of myTextRef -- result: 12.0 (depends on font)

            word 1 of myTextRef -- result: "This"

            color of word 1 of myTextRef -- result: {0, 0, 0}

            set color of word 1 of myTextRef to {65535, 0, 0}

                -- result: color of first worth in view ("This")  is red

        end tell

    end tell

end tell

See the Examples section for the scroll command for information about how to scroll text in a text view.

See the Examples section for the view class for information about how to rotate text in a text view.

Version Notes

Starting with AppleScript Studio version 1.3, the text class has been collapsed into the text view class. The following properties, which you could previously access through the text class, can now be accessed through the text view class:

• alignment

• background color

• content

• contents

• draws background

• editable

• field editor

• font

• horizontally resizable

• imports graphics

• maximum size

• minimum size

• rich text

• selectable

• text color

• uses font panel

• vertically resizable

Starting with AppleScript Studio version 1.2, a script can say word 1 of text view 1 instead of word 1 of text of text view 1 (the default of text is assumed), though the longer version still works.

Support for drag-and-drop commands was added in AppleScript Studio version 1.2. See the “Terminology” for details. In particular, the description for the conclude drop event handler provides information on supporting drag and drop for text view and text field objects.

The content property was added in AppleScript Studio version 1.2. You can use content and contents interchangeably, with one exception. (These properties came over from the text class to the text view class in AppleScript Studio version 1.3.) Within an event handler, contents of theObject returns a reference to an object, rather than the actual contents. To get the actual contents of an object (such as the text contents from a text field) within an event handler, you can either use contents of contents of theObject or content of theObject.

For a sample script that shows the difference between content and contents, see the Version Notes section for the control class.

See the Examples section for the scroll command for information about how to scroll text in a text view.