Cocoa and AppleScript / Apple Events

Question

I'm using Cocoa’s [[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] launchApplicationAtURL… with the NSWorkspaceLaunchNewInstance option to spawn new instances of an AppleScriptable application (Adobe Acrobat), and I want to be able to trigger different Apple Events (do script, quit, save etc…) for each instance.

So far I’ve tried to AppleScript ”System Events” and tell commands based on a new process’ id but for some reason the commands aren't executed by the target process.

I'm getting the process id as [NSRunningApplication processIdentifier] and use that to compile an applescript by [[[NSAppleScript alloc] initWithSource: AppleScript] executeAndReturnError: nil]. The string representation of the AppleScript is something like the following:

tell application "System Events"
  tell (process id [insert process id here]) to do script "this.preflight(Preflight.getProfileByName('Magazine Ads'),false,false);"
end tell

I'm suspecting that the processIdentifier returned by NSRunningApplication is different from the process id used by ”System Events”, but I'm stuck and don't know where to look to get any further. I need a pointers on how to trigger AppleScriptable methods of specific application process from Cocoa, given that

• there can be several instances of the same application running and
• each process that I want to communicate with will be created within the scope of my code

(Running new processes of Adobe Acrobat is necessary to allow the user to do other work while a preflight is running.)

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Edit: The process id returned by cocoa and AppleScript are different:

tell application "System Events" to set process_id to id of every process whose name contains "AdobeAcrobat"

returned {5584211,…}, while at the same time

[NSRunningApplication processIdentifier]

returned 8722

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Edit 2: The AppleEvent object does make it possible to address a process with a certain process id but I haven't been able to figure out how to apply it to an AppleScript object.

pid_t process_id = …; 
NSAppleEventDescriptor* appleevent = [[NSAppleEventDescriptor alloc] initWithDescriptorType:typeKernelProcessID bytes:&process_id length:sizeof(pid)];

I still haven't figured out how NSAppleEventDescriptor be used to access AppleScriptable methods of a process with the given process_id. Any pointers to resources and possibly an example of this would be a perfectly answer to my question.

Answer 1

This does not work because this command is for Acrobat.

You must use the Processes suite commands ("System Events") when you want to simulate (click or the keyboard), get or set (value, property or attribute) on the `GUI elements of the process.

Here is the syntax for using the command do script

tell application id "process.id.here" to do script "this.preflight(Preflight.getProfileByName('Magazine Ads'),false,false);"

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Edit : I thought it was the bundle identifier. It's not possible to execute a do script by "System Events". But it is possible, if you have this script in a menu of the application. You need to find the correct application ID, try unix ID.

To do what you want, put the application in the foreground and run the script

using terms from application "Adobe Acrobat"
    tell application (path to frontmost application)
        do script "this.preflight(Preflight.getProfileByName('Magazine Ads'),false,false);"
    end tell
end using terms from

The Processes suite : Here is a sample script that click on a menu.

tell application "System Events"
    tell (first process whose unix id is (processIdHere as integer))
        set frontmost to true
        click menu item "Crop to TrimBox*" of menu "Document" of menu bar 1
    end tell
end tell