🚀 go-pugleaf

On 16/12/02 8:31 AM +1000, Dave Saunders, daves@pdsassoc.com, wrote:

> I guess that a reference is an AppleScript entity while an object reference is
> an InDesign entity.

Yes. A reference stores just what you put in it, but an object reference
gives you a reference based on the ID object model. Try this:

tell application "InDesign 2.0.2"
 tell document 1
  set x to object reference of text frame 1
  set y to a reference to text frame 1
  {x, y}
 end tell
end tell

You'll get something like:

{text frame id 143 of page id 119 of spread id 114 of document "Untitled-1"
of application "InDesign 2.0.2", text frame 1 of document 1 of application
"InDesign 2.0.2"}

> One practical difference is demonstrated by this pair of scripts. The first
> doesn't work, the second does

In the first one, your reference is resolved into a list of object
references, which are then passed to the search command, which doesn't want
to be passed a list. In the second, the reference is passed unresolved to
the command, which then happily resolves it itself.

Scratched record time: lots of these problems go away if you avoid needless
storing of either kind of reference, and deal with objects directly:

tell application "InDesign 2.0.2"
 tell every document
  search for "  " replacing with " "
 end tell
end tell


-- 
Shane Stanley,  sstanley@myriad-com.com.au