TN2106 says the "open" command should open a file, or a list of files:
open file | list of files
-- Returns a specifier to the created application object.
Opens the specified files, and returns the new application objects
for them - probably documents. The standard version is designed for
opening document files, but applications may apply open to other
objects and add additional parameters.
Now, this seems a bit confusing - that the object would be either
one item, or a list, when it could easily be a list with one item in
it. Clearly this confusion has percolated into Cocoa code that
handles this event.
I'm curious as to opinions on how this event really should be defined.
That definition is correct. (Of course, I'm biased, since I wrote
it.) I suspect you're confusing the client side with the
implementation side -- that definition is how it should appear to the
client, that is, someone writing a script. (Remember, the title of
TN2106 is "Scripting *Interface* Guidelines".) A scripter may write
'open x', or 'open {x, y, z}'. It is allowed (though slightly silly)
to write 'open {x}'. The standard definition used to say "open file",
but then no one could figure out that you could in fact open more than
one file in the same command.
Now, if what you're complaining about is that on the implementation
side it's sort of bogus to make you check for either a bare object or
an NSArray, since you could have just converted the bare object to an
NSArray with one object in it, then that's a different problem. Is
that in fact your problem?
