Communicating via AppleEvents with Revolution applications

[Kee Nethery]

I have a program that is not in Revolution that needs to send commands  
with data and receive results from a Revolution application. I worked  
this out a while ago and found that I had to re-learn it so figured  
I'd document my recipe and post it to the group.

This is what worked for me. I am running Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5.7) on  
Intel, and using Revolution 2.9.0.

1. Open Revolution
2. File / New Mainstack
3. Object / Stack Script
4. enter the following script

on barklikeadog urlEncodedStuff
   put urldecode(urlEncodedStuff) into theData
   return "arf arf" && the seconds && theData
end barklikeadog

5. Apply, close the stack script
6. Object / Stack Inspector
    Name: AppleEventCatcher
7. close the inspector
8. File / Save
9. File / Standalone Application Settings
10. Windows
    Build for: (de-select the checkbox)
11. close the Standalone Application Settings window
12. File / Save
13. File / Save As Standalone Application
14. Quit Revolution
(15. In 2.9.0 these steps are not needed. In 2.8.x they were:
15a. in the Finder, go to the newly created Mac application  
"AppleEventCatcher" and with the control key down, click on the  
application. Select "Show Package Contents"
15b. Go to Contents / Resources / Revolution.rsrc and change the name  
of that file to AppleEventCatcher.rsrc
15c. close the Show Package Contents window)
16. Launch AppleEventCatcher application.
17. Open Apple's Script Editor.
18. In the script window enter the following script:

property thescript : []
property theresult : []

on run
	copy "send \"barklikeadog hello%20world\"" to thescript
	tell application "asdfgh"
		activate
		do script thescript
		put the result into theresult
	end tell
	display dialog theresult
end run

19. Press the Compile button and it will ask you where "asdfgh" is  
located. Select the newly created Mac application "AppleEventCatcher"
20. File / Save (might as well save your AppleScript)
21. Press the Run button
22. The dialog box presented by the Script Editor should display  
something like:
"arf arf 1206236082 hello world"

The data coming back does not need to be URL encoded, it seems to  
travel back just fine.

The tricks are having the script be a send command, putting quotes  
around the script being sent, and when sending multiple variables, URL  
encoding them into one variable.

I don't know what kinds of payload limits there are going to and  
coming from the application.