Language Guide

APPENDIX B

Scriptable Text Editor Dictionary

About Text Objects 317

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.

AppleScript and Non-Roman Script Systems B

A script system is a collection of system software facilities that allow for the

visual representation of a particular writing system. Script systems include

Roman, Japanese, Hebrew, Greek, and Thai. Each script system has a corre-

sponding script code, a constant used, for example, to identify the script

system in which some text was prepared. AppleScript and the Scriptable Text

Editor can handle text prepared in a variety of script systems, provided the

appropriate software is installed on your computer.

A character in an AppleScript string or a Scriptable Text Editor document takes

up either 1 byte or 2 bytes, depending on the script system the character

belongs to. Thus, the size in bytes of a text object may differ from the number

of characters it contains.