<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/loose.dtd"> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <title>Controlling other Applications from MacPython</title> <meta name="generator" content="BBEdit 6.5.3"> <link rel="SHORTCUT ICON" href="pythonsmall.gif"> <META NAME="AppleIcon" CONTENT="pythonsmall.gif"> </head> <body> <h1>Controlling other Applications from MacPython</h1> <p>Python has a fairly complete implementation of the Open Scripting Architecure (OSA, also commonly referred to as AppleScript), allowing you to control scriptable applications from your Python program, and with a fairly pythonic interface. The following pieces of AppleScript and Python are rougly identical (XXXX Not true right now!):</p> <blockquote><tt><pre> tell application "Finder" get name of window 1 end tell </pre></tt></blockquote> <blockquote><tt><pre> import Finder f = Finder.Finder() print f.get(Finder.window(1).name) </pre></tt></blockquote> <p>To send AppleEvents to an application you must first create the Python modules interfacing to the terminology of the application (what <tt>Script Editor</tt> calls the "Dictionary"). Use the IDE menu command <tt>File->Generate OSA Suite...</tt> for this. For more control run</p> <blockquote><tt> pythonw .../Lib/plat-mac/gensuitemodule.py --help </tt></blockquote> <p>from a terminal window.</p> <h2>Creating a scriptable application in Python</h2> You can also create a scriptable application in Python, but this is not very well documented. For Carbon applications you should look at the <tt>MiniAEFrame</tt> module. </body> </html>