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### Motivation There have been several specific hints on this site which use UI scripting to perform tasks that applications' AppleScript dictionaries don't otherwise allow. Unfortunately, UI scripting is a complicated pain to get right. In particular, the code Apple uses as a [demonstration on apple.com][demo] is very long, and not particularly intuitive: [demo]: http://www.apple.com/applescript/uiscripting/02.html tell application "Finder" activate end tell tell application "System Events" tell process "Finder" tell menu bar 1 tell menu bar item "View" tell menu "View" tell menu item "Arrange By" tell menu "Arrange By" click menu item "Size" end tell end tell end tell end tell end tell end tell end tell To that end, I created a helper function, which I call `menu_click`, which can be added to any script to allow the above code to instead be written as: tell application "Finder" to activate menu_click({"Finder", "View", "Arrange By", "Size"}) I find these two lines much clearer and easier to understand than the 19 lines of code that Apple uses for the same purpose. To be fair, even without my function, this code could be written: tell application "Finder" to activate tell application "System Events" click menu item "Size" of ((process Finder)'s (menu bar 1)'s ¬ (menu bar item "View")'s (menu "View")'s ¬ (menu item "Arrange By")'s (menu "Arrange By")) end tell I still like my version better ;) To be even fairer, Apple tries to help out with their own [helper functions][help]. These are useful, but they are overly complicated to use, because a separate function is needed for each level of menu hierarchy the script author wants to use. i.e. the `do_menu` handler can execute the *File → New* command, but not the *Edit → Insert → Line Break* command, which requires the more complicated `do_submenu` handler. For more deeply nested menu options, we'd eventually need a `do_subsubsubmenu` handler, if we continued in Apple's footsteps. [help]: http://www.apple.com/applescript/uiscripting/03.html Thus, the `menu_click` handler was born. Just add the following code to your script, and then call `menu_click` with a list containing the application name, followed by the menu command. Just so we're clear, I'll repeat myself. Copy and paste the "Code" section that immediately follows this sentence into your script verbatim (it can be anywhere: top or bottom makes no difference). Then anywhere in the rest of your script, you can call the helper function. ### Code -- `menu_click`, by Jacob Rus, September 2006 -- -- Accepts a list of form: `{"Finder", "View", "Arrange By", "Date"}` -- Execute the specified menu item. In this case, assuming the Finder -- is the active application, arranging the frontmost folder by date. on menu_click(mList) local appName, topMenu, r -- Validate our input if mList's length < 3 then error "Menu list is not long enough" -- Set these variables for clarity and brevity later on set {appName, topMenu} to (items 1 through 2 of mList) set r to (items 3 through (mList's length) of mList) -- This overly-long line calls the menu_recurse function with -- two arguments: r, and a reference to the top-level menu tell app "System Events" to my menu_click_recurse(r, ((process appName)'s ¬ (menu bar 1)'s (menu bar item topMenu)'s (menu topMenu))) end menu_click on menu_click_recurse(mList, parentObject) local f, r -- `f` = first item, `r` = rest of items set f to item 1 of mList if mList's length > 1 then set r to (items 2 through (mList's length) of mList) -- either actually click the menu item, or recurse again tell app "System Events" if mList's length is 1 then click parentObject's menu item f else my menu_click_recurse(r, (parentObject's (menu item f)'s (menu f))) end if end tell end menu_click_recurse ### Example: Here is a (very simple) example demonstrating the use of these functions. To get the example to work, make sure you copy both the helper functions above and the example code following into the same script. -- This example script turns on the "iTunes Visualizer" visualizer, full screen tell app "iTunes" to activate menu_click({"iTunes", "View", "Visualizer", "iTunes Visualizer"}) menu_click({"iTunes", "View", "Turn On Visualizer"}) menu_click({"iTunes", "View", "Full Screen"}) * * * Happy menu-item selecting. Remember to [turn on UI scripting][ui-scripting] before you run these scripts, or they won't work. [ui-scripting]: http://www.apple.com/applescript/uiscripting/01.html

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