Initially I got:

"Can't get text item delimiters"

When I looked at your endlines handler I noticed you only had "text  
item delimiters" rather than "AppleScript's text item delimiters".  
Changing that fixed that issue, and yes, I got a nice new document  
broken up into paragraphs.

I finally got the one I've been writing finished and got it to run w/ 
no errors. For comparison, on the same text file (420K) it takes just  
over a minute to run, versus the don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-it time  
of Paul's effort. And Paul's script runs about 16K versus my 40K.

Interestingly, Paul's/Mark's script seems to have got lost toward the  
end of the book, and missed(?) an underscore, so the last two and a  
half chapters are bass-ackwards as far as plain styled vs. italic  
styled, while my script didn't do that. :-/

RJay


On Oct 3, 2008, at 2:27 PM, Mark Lively wrote:

> try
> 	set head to "{\\rtf1\\ansi\\ansicpg1252\\cocoartf949\\cocoasubrtf350
> {\\fonttbl\\f0\\fswiss\\fcharset0 Helvetica;}
> {\\colortbl;\\red255\\green255\\blue255;}
> \\margl1440\\margr1440\\vieww12240\\viewh15840\\viewkind1
> \\pard\\tx720\\tx1440\\tx2160\\tx2880\\tx3600\\tx4320\\tx5040\ 
> \tx5760\\tx6480\\tx7200\\tx7920\\tx8640\\ql\\qnatural\\pardirnatural
>
> \\f0\\fs24 \\cf0 "
> 	set tail to "}"
> 	
> 	tell application "Finder"
> 		activate
> 		set inputFile to choose file with prompt "Choose an underscore  
> delimited plaintext file for input."
> 		set inputFileName to name of inputFile
> 		set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "."
> 		copy text item 1 of inputFileName to inputFileName
> 		set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""
> 		set inputFilePath to ((container of inputFile) as alias) as text
> 	end tell
> 	
> 	set inputFileHandle to open for access inputFile
> 	set outputFileHandle to open for access file (inputFilePath &  
> inputFileName & "_Italicized.rtf") with write permission
> 	write head to outputFileHandle
> 	
> 	set evenOddOpenCloseItalicsToggle to 0
> 	repeat
> 		try
> 			set currentChunk to read inputFileHandle until "_"
> 			if evenOddOpenCloseItalicsToggle is 0 then
> 				if currentChunk is "_" then
> 					write ((ASCII character 32) & "\\i " as text) to  
> outputFileHandle as text
> 				else
> 					write (endlines(text 1 thru -2 of currentChunk) & (ASCII  
> character 32) & "\\i " as text) to outputFileHandle
> 				end if
> 				set evenOddOpenCloseItalicsToggle to 1
> 			else
> 				if currentChunk is "_" then
> 					write ((ASCII character 32) & "\\i0" as text) to outputFileHandle
> 				else
> 					write (endlines(text 1 thru -2 of currentChunk) & (ASCII  
> character 32) & "\\i0" as text) to outputFileHandle
> 				end if
> 				set evenOddOpenCloseItalicsToggle to 0
> 			end if
> 		on error e number n
> 			if n is not -39 then display dialog "Error: " & (n as text) &  
> return & e
> 			exit repeat
> 		end try
> 	end repeat
> 	write tail to outputFileHandle
> 	try
> 		close access inputFileHandle
> 		close access outputFileHandle
> 	end try
> on error e number n
> 	display dialog "Error: " & (n as text) & return & e
> end try
>
> on endlines(sometext)
> 	set tid to text item delimiters
> 	set text item delimiters to ASCII character 10 -- in 10.5 you can  
> use linefeed instead
> 	set sometext to text items of sometext
> 	set text item delimiters to "\\" & (ASCII character 10)
> 	set sometext to sometext as text
> 	set text item delimiters to return
> 	set sometext to text items of sometext
> 	set text item delimiters to "\\" & return
> 	set sometext to sometext as text
> 	set text item delimiters to tid
> 	return sometext
> end endlines