Mac Forum / Programming / Perl / August 2005

Hello Vince,

I don't have Adobe Acrobat Pro, and I don't know how it is  
scriptable.  Even if it is not very scriptable, it should be able to  
open files with a script, and it should be possible to send the  
"sendkeys" commands that you describe with the user interface  
scripting.  But then, it would be simpler to use AppleScript than  
Perl.  I think the best place to ask such questions is the  
MacScripting mailing list <http://listserv.dartmouth.edu/scripts/
wa.exe?SUBED1=macscrpt&A=1>.  But to develop AppleScript scripts, you  
should use a Mac...

Good luck, and
Best regards,

Nobumi Iyanaga
Tokyo,
Japan

re are my other concerns:

I would suggest, at the very least, that your company get you a Mac Mini
and a KVM switch so that you can switch between your PC and the Mac,
using the same monitor/keyboard/mouse.  It would be unwise to release a
program without having tested it on a computer setup for which it was
written, wouldn't it?

I'm leaving the rest of the answers; I can check if Acrobat is scriptable
when I get home though.

I just wanted to say this: If what you were talking about were a normal
Perl script, that is: it stayed within what perl does on its own, then
sure.  A Perl environment is a Perl environment, basically.  If you really
wanted to be sure you could put a free Unix on the PC (Darwin, if you
wanted to be absolutely sure...), and test on that.

However, you are mostly talking about programming the Mac, Perl is just
the language you have chosen (and it may not even be the right one for the
job!), so you really would need to test it on a Mac.

Daniel T. Staal

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http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/applescript/

You'll find links to most of what you need there. The rest will be on
Adobe's site, or on AppleScript mail lists.

As has been mentioned, there is probably no reason to resort to perl
and the Carbon API.

This is likely fairly simple to do in Perl, with Mac::Glue, as long as the
app is "scriptable" and as long as it can do what you want to do via Apple
events, and as long as you can figure out HOW to do those things.

You can use AppleScript too, but I find Mac::Glue to be much easier to use,
once you get the hang of it, since you can handle your logic flow and
filesystem accesses much easier in Perl.  Note that AppleScript will not be
able to do something (in general) that Mac::Glue cannot do.

If you're running Tiger with the default Perl, you already have Mac::Glue
installed, though you may wish to update it.  If yes to Toger and no to
updating Mac::Glue, you will need to run this first:

  cd /System/Library/Perl/Extras/bin/
  sudo ./gluedialect
  sudo ./gluescriptadds
  sudo ./gluemac '/System/Library/CoreServices/System Events.app'
  sudo ./gluemac /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app

And then the line above becomes something like:

  sudo ./gluemac /Applications/Acrobat\ Professional

Else, after installing/updating Mac::Glue, just do:

  sudo gluemac /Applications/Acrobat\ Professional

As I don't have the app in question, I can only guess how to do what you
ask; it's different for every app.  So below I give some guesses.

I see the 6.0 dictionary here:

  http://macscripter.net/app_dictionaries/dictionary.php?id=196_0_1_0_C

It has no real clues; you might need to get into UI scripting, which is far
more of a pain.  You can tell the UI to hit a key combination, or select a
menu, type a letter, and so on.  The below assumes you won't need to do that.

  use File::Spec::Functions;
  use Mac::Glue ':all';
 
  my $dir = '/Users/pudge/Desktop/PDFs';
  # using Safari for testing ... it opens each PDF, and closes it
  my $acrobat = new Mac::Glue 'Safari'; #'Acrobat Professional'; # etc.
  $acrobat->activate;

  opendir my $dh, $dir or die "Can't open $dir: $!";
  chdir $dir or die "Can't chdir $dir: $!";
  for my $file (readdir $dh) {
     # or whatever ...
     next unless $file =~ /\.pdf$/i && -f $file;

     my $pdf = $acrobat->open($file);

     ## ideally, $pdf will contain a reference to the just-opened
     ## document, but not for every app, so as a backup:
     $pdf ||= $acrobat->obj(window => 1);  # get front window
     ## the above could also properly be:
     # $pdf ||= $acrobat->obj(document => 1, window => 1);

     ## no idea how to do this part; see "gluedoc $appname" on the
     ## command line for docs for the app, here's a wild guess;
     ## if someone could show me the AppleScript dictionary for the
     ## app, I could take a look; this is the part that may need to
     ## be done with UI scripting
#     $pdf->prop('commenting')->set(to => 1);

     ## usually, you can close "with saving," but you may
     ## need to save explicitly, or you vice versa (again,
     ## app-dependent); the combined close "with saving"
     ## is the most efficient method
#     $pdf->save;
     $pdf->close(saving => enum('yes'));
  }