Vista - Automating a GUI program with VBS from a Windows Service

Hello,

I have a VBS script I used to automate Adobe Illustrator to do some
file format conversions. The script works fine when run from the GUI.

I would like to automate it further by running the script as a Windows
service. I have set this up using SrvAny from the Windows Resource
Kit, and the VBScript seems to run fine, but it hangs when it tries to
start up Illustrator.

I suspect that the problem is that Illustrator tries to bring up a
GUI, but it can't because the Service environment has no GUI.

Does anybody have any advice or suggestions for overcoming this?

Thanks,

-----Scott.

"Scott Gifford" <sgifford@newsgroup> wrote in message
news:83076acc-691f-4684-b7cf-5305ec414d76@newsgroupHard to say without seeing your script. Perhaps you have some interactive
modules.

On Oct 10, 1:32*pm, "Pegasus [MVP]" <n...@newsgroup> wrote:I have simplified my test script down to this (based on Adobe's sample
VBS code):

Set appRef = CreateObject("Illustrator.Application")
Rem Create a new document and assign it to a variable
Set documentRef = appRef.Documents.Add
Rem Create a new text frame item and assign it to a variable
Set sampleText = documentRef.TextFrames.Add
Rem Set the contents and position of the TextFrame
sampleText.Position = Array(200, 200)
sampleText.Contents = "Hello World!"
documentRef.SaveAs("C:\tmp\hello.ai")
documentRef.Close(aiDoNotSaveChanges)

Thanks for any advice!

----Scott.

"Scott Gifford" <sgifford@newsgroup> wrote in message
news:82a6fd67-f6e8-4aa6-9edf-90a67c0428f5@newsgroup
On Oct 10, 1:32 pm, "Pegasus [MVP]" <n...@newsgroup> wrote:I have simplified my test script down to this (based on Adobe's sample
VBS code):

Set appRef = CreateObject("Illustrator.Application")
Rem Create a new document and assign it to a variable
Set documentRef = appRef.Documents.Add
Rem Create a new text frame item and assign it to a variable
Set sampleText = documentRef.TextFrames.Add
Rem Set the contents and position of the TextFrame
sampleText.Position = Array(200, 200)
sampleText.Contents = "Hello World!"
documentRef.SaveAs("C:\tmp\hello.ai")
documentRef.Close(aiDoNotSaveChanges)

Thanks for any advice!

----Scott.

=================

I do not have a copy of Adobe Illustrator and am therefore unable to test
your code. Here are a few tips that might help you:
- What makes you think that the code "hangs"?
- Where exactly does it hang? How did you find out?
- What triggers execution of your code?
- Does the code below work for you?

The script runs continuously in a loop. Once every 5 seconds it checks if
the semaphore file d:\sem.txt exists. If the file does exist then the script
will do this:
- Delete the semaphore file.
- Write a date/time stamp into d:\Report.txt.
- Open the file d:\test.doc in MS Word and mark the word "Fabrikam" bold.
- Save & close the file and close MS Word.

If the script runs for you then I suggest you replace the word-specific code
with Adobe-specific code.

Set oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Do While True
If oFSO.FileExists("d:\sem.txt") Then
oFSO.DeleteFile("d:\sem.txt")
Modify
End If
WScript.Sleep 5000
Loop

Sub Modify
Set objWord = CreateObject("Word.Application")
objWord.Visible = False
Set objDoc = objWord.Documents.Open("D:\Test.doc")
Set objSelection = objWord.Selection
With objSelection
.Find.Text = "Fabrikam"
.Find.Forward = True
.Find.MatchWholeWord = True
.Find.Replacement.Font.Bold = True
.Find.Execute , , , , , , , , , , 2
End With
objDoc.Save
objDoc.Close
objWord.Quit
Set objWord = Nothing
Set oReport = oFSO.OpenTextFile("d:\Report.txt", 8, True)
oReport.WriteLine Date & " " & Time
oReport.Close
End Sub

On Oct 10, 4:57 pm, "Pegasus [MVP]" <n...@newsgroup> wrote:[ ... ]Those are really good questions, thank you. They prompted me to
investigate further. I rewrote my test program to provide more useful
diagnostics, and this is what I see:

Log opened
Starting Illustrator
Illustrator Started, creating new document
Failed
Error number -2147352577
Error description: an Illustrator error occurred: 271 ('')
Error source: Adobe Illustrator

So, it seems Illustrator is throwing an error with code 271, and not a
lot of other information.

This is my new test program:

Set fs = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set logfile = fs.OpenTextFile("d:\log.txt", 8, True)
logfile.WriteLine("Log opened")

On Error Resume Next
RunIt()

Rem *** If we got here, there was an error
Rem *** (since the below sub exits if it succeeds)
logfile.WriteLine("Failed")
logfile.WriteLine("Error number " & Err.Number)
logfile.WriteLine("Error description: " & Err.Description)
logfile.WriteLine("Error source: " & Err.Source)
logfile.Close()
wscript.quit(2)

Sub RunIt()
logfile.WriteLine("Starting Illustrator")
Set appRef = CreateObject("Illustrator.Application")
logfile.WriteLine("Illustrator Started, creating new document")

Rem *** Create a new document and assign it to a variable
Set documentRef = appRef.Documents.Add
logfile.WriteLine("Document created, doodling")

Rem *** Draw some stuff in the document
Set sampleText = documentRef.TextFrames.Add
sampleText.Position = Array(200, 200)
sampleText.Contents = "Hello World!"
logfile.WriteLine("Done doodling, saving")

documentRef.SaveAs("d:\hello.ai")
logfile.WriteLine("Done saving, closing")

documentRef.Close(aiDoNotSaveChanges)
logfile.WriteLine("Done closing, exiting")

logfile.Close()
wscript.quit(1)
End Sub

It is run directly from a Windows Service, using SrvAny and
cscript.exe.
Sorry, I don't have a copy of MS Word so I couldn't try it, hopefully
my experiments above will provide information which is useful in
answering the same questions your code would have.

Any ideas for what a next step is here?

Thanks again for your help!

----Scott.