Hi Brian,

This looks like exactly what I need.    I don't need attachments.   
Saving as PDF would be ideal but they also said they would settle for  
plain text receipt.

That' a great idea on the link for download.  I never even thought of  
that and it makes it much simpler.

Thank you much for your help.

~ steve


On Apr 19, 2009, at 2:06 PM, Brian Stevens wrote:

>
> On Apr 19, 2009, at 8:30 AM, Steve wrote:
>
>> A customer of mine is requesting that our point-of-sale application  
>> save a receipt as a PDF then email it to the customer.
>>
>> While I know how to do this in a couple of steps, it is far from an  
>> automatic process.
>>
>> Can this process be done in AppleScript or automated in FB4.4 ?
>
>
> Steve,
>
> For email:
>
> The example "LaunchMailPressSend" in the AppleScript folder of FB5  
> examples shows one way to send an email but has limitations as  
> written ( by me - sorry ).
>
> (1) It doesn't do attachments and more code would need to be written  
> to do this
>
> (2) It is specifically written to drive the Apple Mail app. It could  
> be adapted for other mail clients but there is no smarts in this  
> demo for figuring out what mail client is being used.
> (3) Access for Assistive Devices must be turned on ( and the code  
> checks for this ) but I've had zero complaints since it is simple to  
> turn on in System Preferences
>
> The demo was built for a specific need after encountering too many  
> potential roadblocks with the unix sendmail command. Once the code  
> bypasses a mail client( as the unix command does ), it must deal  
> with SMTP servers, permissions from ISPs and various other non- 
> trivial hurdles. There are examples of using sendmail but none  
> address the preceding hurdles because it is going to be different  
> for each ISP and Mac.
>
> One other thought: many ISPs strip off attachments greater than a  
> certain size ( and some are as small as a couple of megs ), so in my  
> own world I've been sending clients a link to a pdf file they can  
> download. This bypasses the entire email hassle ( because they  
> download via an http link in a web browser ). I would expect a  
> receipt file to be small, so this shouldn't be an issue but just a  
> thought.
>
> For PDFs:
>
> The example, QD and CG -> pdf, in the Graphics/CoreGraphics (Quartz)  
> folder of FB5 examples shows how to generate a PDF from QuickDraw or  
> Coregraphics commands under program control ( assume this is needed  
> vs. using the print dialog to allow the user to create a pdf file )
>
> It sounds to me like the email code could work for you and your  
> clients if they are willing to use Apple's Mail. The only remaining  
> task would be to write AppleScript to attach the PDF file to the  
> email. You could also write an automator action to retrieve the pdf  
> file and attach it to the email. Maybe a way to do this is always  
> save the pdf file by the same name ( so you can hard code the path  
> and name in automator - maybe put files in useriD/Library/ 
> Application Support/Some Folder for this purpose ). After sending  
> the email, the program code would rename the pdf file to some  
> meaningful name ( clientxxxx04_18_2009Tran1234567  etc. ) allowing  
> the next receipt file to use the same hardcode name. That was all  
> OTTOMH, so it undoubtedly can be improved upon.
>
> HTH---good luck Steve.
>
> Brian S.
>
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