Inside Macintosh: AppleScript Language Guide / Part 3 - Appendixes

Appendix B - Scriptable Text Editor Dictionary / About Text Objects

Text Styles

The text styles of Scriptable Text Editor text objects are defined by two properties: Style and Uniform Styles:

• The Style property specifies the styles of the text object. If the styles vary within the object, the Style property specifies the style of the first character of the object.
• The Uniform Styles property specifies the styles that are the same for all the characters in the text object.

The value of a Style or Uniform Styles property is a record with two properties: On Styles and Off Styles. The On Styles property specifies styles that are "on," that is, that apply to the text object. The Off Styles property specifies styles that are "off," that is, that do not apply to the text object. Both On Styles and Off Styles are lists of constants that specify text styles. For the Scriptable Text Editor, these constants are bold, italic, outline, underline, and shadow.

The following example shows the value of a Style property for a text object whose characters are bold and underlined:

{On Styles:{bold, underline}, Off Styles:{italic, outline, shadow}}

The On Styles property lists the two styles (bold and underline) that apply to the text object, while the Off Styles property lists the styles that do not apply to the text object. Together, the On Styles and Off Styles properties of a Style property include all of the text styles that the Scriptable Text Editor supports.

The Uniform Styles property specifies the styles that are uniform throughout a text object, that is, that are the same for every character in a text object. The On Styles property specifies the styles that apply to every character in the object. The Off Styles property specifies styles that do not apply to any character in the text object. If any of the style constants (bold, italic, outline, underline, and shadow) do not appear in either field, it is because the styles apply to some, but not all, of the characters in the object.

The following example shows the value of a Uniform Styles property for a
text object in which every character is bold and no characters are outlined
or shadowed:

{On Styles:{bold}, Off Styles:{outline, shadow}}

The fact that the italic and underline constants do not appear in either field means that at least one, but not all, of the characters in the object are italicized and underlined. To find out which characters are italicized or underlined, you must examine the Style properties of each character in the
text object.

To set the styles of a text object, use a Copy or Set command to set the Style property of the text object to one of the following:

• a two-part record like the one described earlier for the value of a
  Style property
• a one-part record that specifies either On Styles or Off Styles
• a list specifying the On Styles
• a constant specifying a single style

For example, here are four ways to use the Set command to set text styles:

set the style of word 1 to {On Styles:{italic}, ÿ 
   Off Styles:{bold, shadow}}
set the style of word 1 to {On Styles:{italic, bold}}
set the style of word 1 to {bold, italic}
set the style of word 1 to italic

• In the first example, the styles specified in the On Styles property are added to the active styles of word 1. The styles specified in the Off Styles property are removed from the active styles of word 1. Styles that are not specified in either property remain the same. For example, if word 1 is originally underlined, shadowed, and bold, then after the Set command, word 1 is underlined and italicized.
• In the second example, the styles specified in the On Styles property are added to the active styles of word 1. Styles that are not specified remain the same. For example, if word 1 is originally underlined and shadowed, then after the Set command, word 1 is italicized, underlined, shadowed, and bold.
• In the third example, the styles specified in the list are added to the active styles of word 1. Styles that are not specified remain the same. For example, if word 1 is originally underlined and shadowed, then after the Set command, word 1 is italicized, underlined, shadowed, and bold.
• In the fourth example, the style specified in the command is added to the active styles of word 1. All other styles remain the same. For example, if word 1 is originally underlined, shadowed, and bold, then after the Set command, word 1 is italicized, underlined, shadowed, and bold.

When you set the style of a text object, if you include the same style constant in both the On Styles property and the Off Styles property, the Scriptable Text Editor returns the error Bad data.

When setting text styles, you can use a special constant--plain--to specify that the text object is to be plain, that is, have no text styles. If you include constants other than plain in the On Styles property, the Scriptable Text Editor ignores the other constants. If you include plain in the Off Styles property, the Scriptable Text Editor returns the error Bad data.