[Pythonmac-SIG] Accessing front window in IDE

Jack Jansen jack@oratrix.nl
Mon, 11 Oct 1999 11:33:11 +0200


> >Hmm, it would be nice to have a bit of an API for this that IDE extension
> >scripts could use. If there was an easier interface than mucking around with
> >the Window, PyEdit and waste internals that might prompt more people to write
> >nifty little utilities.
> 
> That's a good point.  Seems like most of the time, you'd want to 
> either change the text, or change the selection (e.g., if doing some 
> sort of automatic search thing), or both.  That's pretty easy.
> 
> But then, what if somebody wants to write the "Reveal In Finder" 
> script?  That requires access to the window path; text and selection 
> range aren't enough.  So we add access to the path too; but what if 
> there are other things we haven't thought of?

More-or-less. I'm thinking along the lines of how other applications export 
functionality through AppleEvents. We would do it through Python objects, of 
course, but with a similar functionality. The object hierarchy would be 
something like
IDE_application
    frontwindow() -> IDE_window
    getwindowbyname(name) -> IDE_window
    openwindow(filename) -> IDE_window
    ...
IDE_window
    getselection() -> IDE_text
    gettextrange(from, to) ->IDE_text
    setselection(from, to)
    ...
IDE_text
    get() -> string
    set(string)
    setcolor(r, g, b)
    ...
	
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