Hi Eric,

It's been reported and I can confirm up, but I forgot to put it up in the list of known bugs. Oops.

Thanks!

Fixed in build 51.

Okay, so now two things happen.

First it pops up a dialog box asking where "System Events" is.

Then when I cancel that, it says Aperture isn't running. The first time it wasn't, the second time it was. Same errors both times.

Mac Pro 2.66, Graphics card X1900, 10.5.2, 6 gigs RAM, Aperture 2.1 (3C27).

Do you still get that after a reboot?

It's a weird dialog, because it means the OS can't find one of it's own system-level utilities - in this case the one that let's me find out which applications are running.

Another bit of troubleshooting - could you open up Script Editor from Applications/AppleScript, copy and paste the following text into it, hit the Run button and tell me what results you get?

tell application "System Events" to get name of every process

Thanks,

Ian

Hi Ian,

Here's the list (I use Script Debugger 4):

'utxt'("loginwindow"),
'utxt'("Folder Actions Dispatcher"),
'utxt'("AirPort Base Station Agent"),
'utxt'("ARDAgent"),
'utxt'("Spotlight"),
'utxt'("Dock"),
'utxt'("AppleVNCServer"),
'utxt'("SystemUIServer"),
'utxt'("Finder"),
'utxt'("QuicKeys"),
'utxt'("MagicMenu"),
'utxt'("Microsoft Database Daemon"),
'utxt'("Caffeine"),
'utxt'("Microsoft AU Daemon"),
'utxt'("Moose"),
'utxt'("OmniFocus"),
'utxt'("SpeechSynthesisServer"),
'utxt'("ChronosNotesService"),
'utxt'("iChatAgent"),
'utxt'("MagicMenuHotKeyDaemon"),
'utxt'("QuicKeysBackgroundEngine"),
'utxt'("AppleSpell"),
'utxt'("Aperture"),
'utxt'("Image Capture Extension"),
'utxt'("mdworker"),
'utxt'("mdworker"),
'utxt'("Microsoft Entourage"),
'utxt'("Safari"),
'utxt'("Alerts Daemon"),
'utxt'("Script Debugger 4"),
'utxt'("System Events")

And yes, it happens after reboot. No matter what I do, or workflow I create. When I change the Decision to IPTC and the select a field name, the system events dialog comes up. When I dismiss that, then it gives me the error that Aperture is not running. As you can see from the previous post, it is running.

Curioser and curioser. There's something seriously odd in your OS setup (unless Script Debugger returns list results differently from running scripts in other environments) - that should be a comma-delimited list of application names, enclosed in quotes, for example:

{"loginwindow", "Dock", "Spotlight", "Finder", "iTunesHelper", "smcFanControl", "ChronoSyncBackgrounder", "Default Folder X BG", "DragThing", "Snapz Pro X", "DragThing Helper", "Folder Actions Dispatcher", "System Events", "AppleSpell", "SpeechService", "SystemUIServer", "TextEdit", "Mail", "Quicksilver", "Aperture Assistant build 51", "iCal", "Safari", "mdworker", "Script Editor"}

Could you try it in Script Editor as well and let me know what kind of results you get?

And it still doesn't explain why you're getting the 'where is System Events' dialog. :-(

Could you also launch build 49 and try it again, it uses exactly the same code for checking if Aperture is running, so you should have been getting problem with it.

Thanks for the further info,

Ian

P.S. The reason it turns up then is because I check the Aperture database to know whether the IPTC or EXIF field will contain text or a number so that you get the relevant list of decisions.
As it's possible to have multiple copies of Aperture installed side-by-side and the database scheme changed between 1.5.6 and 2.x I need to check for the running version of Aperture...

Ian

Hi Ian,

Okay, here's script editor's output. Script Debugger gives a similar list, but there's some strange formatting (little boxes) that when I paste it into your forum software makes it invisible. So I went with a different form of output. The "utxt" is just formatting I didn't bother to remove. I don't know Script Debugger well enough yet to understand what that bit means. It pretty much reports the same information, though. Here it is from Script Editor:

{"loginwindow", "AirPort Base Station Agent", "Folder Actions Dispatcher", "ARDAgent", "Spotlight", "AppleVNCServer", "Dock", "SystemUIServer", "Finder", "QuicKeys", "MagicMenu", "Microsoft Database Daemon", "Caffeine", "Microsoft AU Daemon", "OmniFocus", "SpeechSynthesisServer", "ChronosNotesService", "MagicMenuHotKeyDaemon", "iChatAgent", "QuicKeysBackgroundEngine", "AppleSpell", "Microsoft Entourage", "Safari", "Alerts Daemon", "Moose", "Script Debugger 4", "Script Editor", "System Events"}

I'm afraid I don't have build 49 any more. Wait, I'll see if I can dredge it up from Time Machine. I'll get back to you.

Very odd. That's exactly the same code that Aperture Assistant uses to see what's running, so you should get the same error message about 'where is System Events' no matter where the script is run from. :-(

Ian

P.S. You can also download build 49 again if it's easier:
http://aperture-assistant.com/files/downloads/aperture_assistant_build_4...

Well, I've run it with Build 49 and I don't get the error. Sorry!

And you're still getting the error message with build 51?

Ian

Well, once I went through the list of where System Events is asked for and clicked on it, Aperture Assistant seems to remember. I restarted it and the error goes away. So for some reason, AA isn't able to see System Events until you point it to it.

But then the workflow doesn't work. The test indicates it will find "teh" and replace it in the sentence with "the" but when it executes, it errors out. It's the same whether I make it case senstive or not.

Here's the report:

2 errors!

Run Workflow
Time taken: 0.155 seconds

SOURCE NODE 1, Selection, Number of images: 2

Version Name: "_ELW4658"
ID: 4Cfeb04LRqOi/IIdeSAooA
TEXT NODE 1 Get Text: "teh flower on campus"
TEXT NODE 2 Find "teh" and replace with "the" Case-sensitive: true "the flower on campus"
ACTION NODE 1 Set IPTC Caption to: "the flower on campus"execution error

Version Name: "_ELW4659"
ID: Qn5Xj+W3TgqQ6PLcZmNatA
TEXT NODE 1 Get Text: "teh flower on campus 2"
TEXT NODE 2 Find "teh" and replace with "the" Case-sensitive: true "the flower on campus 2"
ACTION NODE 1 Set IPTC Caption to: "the flower on campus 2"execution error

OK, I'll put together a special testbed app and see if we can find out exactly where the problem is occurring. Anyone else seeing this?

Thanks,

Ian

Here's the test app:

http://www.aperture-assistant.com/files/downloads/apassist_script_test.z... (2MB)

Could you click the first three buttons in turn and let me know what happens?

Thanks,

Ian

Sorry to take so long, just got back to looking.

Here are the results from the test app.

{"loginwindow", "Folder Actions Dispatcher", "Dock", "AirPort Base Station Agent", "ARDAgent", "SystemUIServer", "Spotlight", "AppleVNCServer", "Finder", "QuicKeys", "MagicMenu", "Microsoft Database Daemon", "Caffeine", "Microsoft AU Daemon", "Moose", "OmniFocus", "SpeechSynthesisServer", "ChronosNotesService", "MagicMenuHotKeyDaemon", "iChatAgent", "QuicKeysBackgroundEngine", "AppleSpell", "Microsoft Entourage", "Safari", "Alerts Daemon", "Portfolio", "PIP", "Script Debugger 4", "DashboardClient", "DashboardClient", "DashboardClient", "DashboardClient", "mdworker", "mdworker", "Aperture", "Image Capture Extension", "ApAssist script test", "System Events"}

true

2.1

Thanks. That tells me that running AppleScripts is working. Sounds like there must be some weird combination between build 51 and your system - the 'execution error' in the report when trying to change the IPTC data was also AppleScripts failing to run.

I should be releasing a new version of Aperture Assistant on Monday, hopefully that will work OK for you.

Ian

Hi Eric,

Could you let me know if Aperture Assistant 1.0 is doing the same?
http://aperture-assistant.com/downloads

Ian

Nope. Here's the result of running against two image with the misspelled:

2 errors!

Run Workflow
Time taken: 0.157 seconds

SOURCE NODE 1, Selection, Number of images: 2

Version Name: "_ELW4658"
ID: 4Cfeb04LRqOi/IIdeSAooA
TEXT NODE 1 Get Text: "teh flower on campus"
TEXT NODE 2 Find "teh" and replace with "the" Case-sensitive: true "the flower on campus"
ACTION NODE 1 Set IPTC Caption to: "the flower on campus"execution error

Version Name: "_ELW4659"
ID: Qn5Xj+W3TgqQ6PLcZmNatA
TEXT NODE 1 Get Text: "teh flower on campus 2"
TEXT NODE 2 Find "teh" and replace with "the" Case-sensitive: true "the flower on campus 2"
ACTION NODE 1 Set IPTC Caption to: "the flower on campus 2"execution error

(same with Case Sensitive unchecked.)

You're still getting the System Events message as well?

Ian

No, I haven't gotten the system events error since I pointed Aperture Assistant to it. It was a one-time fix.

Time for another test app, then. That might be a few days, in the meantime could you select a few images that don't have captions, paste the following into Script Editor and run it?

tell application "Aperture"
set selectedImages to the selection
set tImg to item 1 of selectedImages
tell tImg
make IPTC tag with properties {name:"Caption/Abstract", value:"testing"}
end tell
end tell

It should loop through each of the selected images and put 'testing' into the IPTC Caption.

Ian

I've now had a second report of the "Where is System Events" dialog, and after some more digging around on the net it appears there may be issues related to disk-level copying of drives.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1163265&tstart=0

Have you cloned your drive at any stage using Disk Utility, Carbon Copy Cloner or similar?

Ian

Okay, the sript put "testing" in the first selected image's caption field, but in the rest of the selected images, the caption field remains empty.

Reading the script, I'm not seeing where is it doing the looping. Wouldn't the:

"set tImg to item 1 of selectedImages"

only set the first image's caption?

When I add this to the script:

set tImg to item 1 of selectedImages
set tImg to item 2 of selectedImages
set tImg to item 3 of selectedImages
set tImg to item 4 of selectedImages

It only enters the text into the fourth selected image.

Go figure... :-P

As a matter of fact, I have cloned my boot drive from a smaller drive to a bigger one. I had problems at home with my newer Mac Pro and a cloned drive. Several applications would not run at all until I re-installed OS X with an archive & install. If I ever get some free time, I think I'll re-install Leopard at work too.

testing subs

Yes, I forgot that I took out the loop to make it a 'safer' test with no chance of wiping multiple captions...
For reference, it would need to be like this:

repeat with i from 1 to number of items in selectedImages
set tImg to item i of selectedImages
tell tImg
make IPTC tag with properties {name:"Caption/Abstract", value:"testing"}
end tell
end repeat

So AppleScript control of Aperture is definitely working, but it appears that the scripts aren't running correctly from within Aperture Assistant on your machine - the 'execution error' in the report is the AppleScript failing to run. That narrows down my next test...

Cloning - I've no idea why disk-level cloning would affect System Events, and all my systems have been cloned multiple times. That said, I'm going to re-write the code that checks for running applications so that it doesn't use System Events anyway.

Thanks again for the reports,

Ian

I was using a program called SuperDuper. Which had major problems with Leopard until just before I got my new Mac Pro in February. It seemed to work for me (and I had a safe backup, so no big worries) but it appears there are Leopard issues with cloning software that havn't been pinned down yet. I guess I need to report to SuperDuper's developer what's happening to my machine.

The System Events thing turns out to be a bit of a false alarm - someone on a developer's list just noticed that I had an extra space in the application name, 'System Events ' instead of 'System Events'.

But that doesn't explain why the other actions are failing. :-(

Ian

Yeah, too bad copy paste seems to love to grab those dang spaces so readily. Good for word processing, bad for everything else!

Good luck. I know how frustrating this can be.