Let me back pedal a second, then... Yes, I agree it's fully
documented, but it's certainly not easy to read to non-programmers or
people just starting out even though that's who they're pitching it
towards. The documentation from both Apple and most software vendors is
one of the continuing complaints on the AS mailing list. On the other
hand, the AS docs and implementation that come with Adobe CS are just
fantastic, and gave us that final push to move away from Quark for
almost all our ancillaries. I wish more companies would follow their
lead, including Apple. I've read too many nasty posts to the AS mailing
lists to know to stay away from Mail. :-)
I plan on supporting Applescript in an app I'm working on, and I'm very
excited about RB's ability to allow that. I believe RBDev magazine has
an article about it as well.
--
Philip Regan
pregan at mac dot com
http://homepage.mac.com/pregan
On Sep 30, 2005, at 12:54, Kevin Windham wrote:
On Sep 30, 2005, at 11:28 AM, Philip Regan wrote:
This may seem off-topic, but bear with me for a moment...
It's interesting that Applescript comes up in this context because
there's a couple threads about how Applescript is failure in terms of
being English-like but still having a strict and largely undocumented
syntax.
Sorry to add to the OT, but I keep seeing this undocumented syntax
assertion about AppleScript. AppleScript's syntax is fully documented.
The thing that makes AppleScript so useful and frustrating at the same
time is that it was designed to make automated workflows possible. You
can use it to link together completely unrelated applications that
have no clue about each other. This is a wonderful thing, but it has
it's drawbacks. The main one is that each application vendor is able
to support AppleScript to whatever level they please.
This means that some programs have very poorly written dictionaries
and documentation. This reality is not the fault of AppleScript
necessarily. So while one vendor may support the "whose" clause,
another may not. This can cause a lot of confusion, but it's the
nature of the beast. I am thankful that there are so many apps that
support AppleScript even if they don't support it to the nth degree.
It makes things challenging sometimes, but at least these things are
possible. Without AppleScript, they wouldn't be.
And, to try and bring this back on topic a bit, Thomas Reed has his
presentation of REAL World 2004 still on his site if you would like to
support AppleScript in your RB made programs.
<http://www.bitjuggler.com/extra/index.shtml> Supporting some of the
options is pretty tricky. Looking through the presentation may give an
idea why complete scripting support isn't more prevalent. In my mind
it's a lack of effort from developers, and a lack of effort from Apple
to make it easier for developers to understand all the things that
make AppleScript better for end users. Even Apple gives it a half
hearted effort in a lot of cases. Anyone tried scripting Mail.app
lately? :-)
- Kevin
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