Applescript to work with text. I'm stuck.

Hi nice peoples

I'm working in BBEdit, preparing academic documents to be browser-read,
and I'd like to reproduce a script I have written for FileMaker Pro,
which places tags round either side of a selection.

e.g. if I want to markup a word/phrase for italics, in FileMaker I can
easily write a script that copies

selection

and replaces it with

<i>selection</i>

Sole purpose: to do the job quicker than manually copy-pasting the
front tag, then pasting the end tag, backing up 2 spaces and inserting
the /. Time after time.

Nothing fancy. I thought it would be simple to reproduce this tool in
Applescript for use in BBEdit, but I'm stuck!! I've gone googling for
help, and now I'm even more confused than I was before. I got some of
it to work, but not the whole trick.

Maybe I should buy a book, but the one I found in a library doesn't
seem to provide help in this area. There doesn't seem to be any guide
or whatever that suits my limited CODING expertise. Perhaps Applescript
isn't designed for this sort of thing?

So I'm simply asking you guys who DO understand:

1) can I do this? and how?

AND

2) will a book like Applescript for Dummies cover this sort of thing?

All this has sure made me feel like a dummy, and I hope some kind
person has the patience to help me out.

Thanks in (hopeful) anticipation.


Fuddled.

On 2008-05-04 05:41:44 -0400, Fuddled said:

> Hi nice peoples
>
> I'm working in BBEdit, preparing academic documents to be browser-read,
> and I'd like to reproduce a script I have written for FileMaker Pro,
> which places tags round either side of a selection.
>
> e.g. if I want to markup a word/phrase for italics, in FileMaker I can
> easily write a script that copies
>
> selection
>
> and replaces it with
>
> <i>selection</i>
>
> Sole purpose: to do the job quicker than manually copy-pasting the
> front tag, then pasting the end tag, backing up 2 spaces and inserting
> the /. Time after time.
>
> Nothing fancy. I thought it would be simple to reproduce this tool in
> Applescript for use in BBEdit, but I'm stuck!! I've gone googling for
> help, and now I'm even more confused than I was before. I got some of
> it to work, but not the whole trick.
>
> Maybe I should buy a book, but the one I found in a library doesn't
> seem to provide help in this area. There doesn't seem to be any guide
> or whatever that suits my limited CODING expertise. Perhaps Applescript
> isn't designed for this sort of thing?
>
> So I'm simply asking you guys who DO understand:
>
> 1) can I do this? and how?
>
> AND
>
> 2) will a book like Applescript for Dummies cover this sort of thing?
>
> All this has sure made me feel like a dummy, and I hope some kind
> person has the patience to help me out.
>
> Thanks in (hopeful) anticipation.

Have you tried something like this?

--> Cut <--
tell application "BBEdit"
set selection to "<i>" & (get selection) & "</i>"
end tell
--> Cut <--

This works fine in TextWrangler which is almost identical to BBEdit
where scripting is concerned.
>
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