Is AppleScript broken?

[akiva_atwood]

Catalina 10.15.7 and ID 15.1.2

All of the Applescript sample i've tried crash with errors

Simple scripts like

tell application "Adobe InDesign 2020"

set mySelection to selection

set myCharacterStyle to character style "Italics"

set applied character style of item 1 of mySelection to myCharacterStyle of active document

end tell

crash with error message
Invalid key form
on character style "Italics"

[rob day]

Two of the lines in your code return errors. Try this:

tell application id "com.adobe.indesign"
	set mySelection to selection
	
	--set myCharacterStyle to character style "Italics" 
	--error: Can’t get character style \"Italics\"." 
	
	set myCharacterStyle to (every character style of active document whose name is "Italics")
	
	--set applied character style of item 1 of mySelection to myCharacterStyle of active document
	--error "Adobe InDesign 2020 got an error: Invalid value for set property 'applied character style'. Expected character style or string, but received nothing."
	
	set applied character style of item 1 of mySelection to item 1 of myCharacterStyle
end tell

[akiva_atwood]

this gives an error:
Expected “from”, etc. but found property.
on the word "style" in 

(every character style of active document whose name is "Italics")

[rob day]

You can also use object reference, this should work:

tell application id "com.adobe.indesign"
	set mySelection to selection
	set myCharacterStyle to object reference of character style "Italics" of active document
	set applied character style of item 1 of mySelection to myCharacterStyle
end tell

[akiva_atwood]

this gives an error:
Expected end of line, etc. but found “reference”.

[rob day]

There do seem to be many problems with AS on Catalina—can’t help I’m using High Sierra. The script in your first post does not compile on HS (my examples do). There aren’t many AS scripters here, so you might check at macscripter

https://macscripter.net/

[akiva_atwood]

thanks for trying