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Important: The information in this document is obsolete and should not be used for new development.

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Inside Macintosh: Interapplication Communication /
Chapter 8 - Apple Event Terminology Resources


Creating an Apple Event Terminology Extension Resource

Scriptable applications must include an Apple event terminology extension ('aete') resource. You use an 'aete' resource to inform scripting components about the extent of your application's support for the standard Apple event suites, any custom Apple events or Apple event objects defined by your application, and the corresponding human-language terms for use in scripts that control your application.

The format of the 'aete' resource is identical to that of the 'aeut' resource, although it serves a different purpose. The 'aeut' resource maps human-language names to IDs, keywords, and other codes used in the Apple events described by the current edition of the Apple Event Registry: Standard Suites. The 'aete' resource for an application uses the same format to accomplish the following:

By specifying a suite ID, suite level, and suite version, your application can indicate that it supports an entire suite. Because the 'aeut' resource provided by each scripting component lists the human-language terms for all the standard suites, you do not have to repeat this information if you support a suite in its entirety. If you support a subset of a standard suite, you must list all the Apple events, Apple event parameters, object classes, and so on and equivalent human-language terms for the parts of the suite your application does support.

You can include at most one 'aete' resource per application or per module. The language code for this resource must match the language code of the language for which you are developing your application. Applications that support additional modules with their own 'aete' resources must provide an 'scsz' resource and handle the Get AETE event as described in "Handling the Get AETE Event," which begins on page 8-28.

IMPORTANT
Each human-language term supported by an application should correspond to a unique Apple event ID, keyword, or other code in either the application's 'aete' resource or the 'aeut' resource. For example, since the 'aeut' resource defines "size" as the human-language equivalent for the property identified by the four-character code 'ptsz' (the pPointSize property of text objects), an application's 'aete' resource must not define "size" as the human-language equivalent for some other part of an Apple event or object class. However, more than one human-language term can correspond to the same Apple event ID or code. For example, an application's 'aete' resource can define a second human-language term, "point size," that corresponds to the Apple event identifier 'ptsz'.
The AppleScript Software Developers' Kit (available from APDA) includes a tool that allows you to specify your application's support for Apple events and creates the equivalent 'aete' resource. The previous section, "Structure of Apple Event Terminology Resources," describes the basic format used by both the 'aeut' and 'aete' resources.

The sections that follow provide examples of 'aete' resources that can be generated with the tools in the AppleScript Software Developers' Kit.


Subtopics
Supporting Standard Suites Without Extensions
Extending the Standard Suites
Supporting Subsets of Suites
Supporting New Suites

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© Apple Computer, Inc.
7 JUL 1996