Question

I am trying to make an integrated presentation for my students.

System: OS X Lion 10.7

For that I need to show a foreground window running a 3D presentation which is remotely controlled by a command line on another screen.

Besides it I would like to show a small set of PDF slides behind it.

I need some way of “remote controlling” the backgrounded PDF Viewer (Adobe Reader or PDFView) to accept simple commands like

• Go to Page x (ideally)
• Go to first page (home button)
• Go to next page (arrow down, arrow right, page down or scroll down will all do)

I prefer to run the PDF in Adobe Reader fullscreen mode (allows me to background it and overlay another window on top, but PDFView could do too.

I have tried various Applescripts (run with osascript), but with no success:

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Adobe Reader"
        tell window "starkdemo.pdf" to key code 125
    end tell
end tell

sends key down to my terminal

tell application "/Applications/Adobe Reader.app"
    tell active pane of active window
        large scroll down 1
    end tell
end tell

gives me an error 63:69: script error: Expected end of line but found class name. (-2741)

Answer 1

Try:

activate application "Adobe Reader"
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Adobe Reader"
        click menu item "Full Screen Mode" of menu 1 of menu bar item "View" of menu bar 1
        delay 2
        key code 125
        delay 2
        keystroke space
        delay 2
    end tell
end tell

Or try this with Acrobat Pro

tell application "Adobe Acrobat Pro"
    tell PDF Window 1
        read page down
    end tell
end tell

Or

tell application "Adobe Acrobat Pro"
    tell PDF Window 1
        goto page 3
    end tell
end tell