Re: scripting Photoshop
Re: scripting Photoshop
- Subject: Re: scripting Photoshop
- From: Leonard Rosenthol <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 08:20:25 -0500
At 10:10 PM -0800 12/12/00, email@hidden wrote:
>>>>>You will find that the Photoshop Actions architecture is actually MORE
powerful than AppleScript, because they looked at AS's
limitations and flaws (like a single flat namespace) and addressed them in
it's implementation.
That does not make it more powerful. The fact that something can be done
by itself show's potential, but PhotoShop's actions will never be as
"powerful" as an AppleScript implementation becuase very little control is
given to the "actioner" and all these wonderful capabilities with no
control does not add up to power.
Ah, you are mixing Apples and Oranges.
I am talking about the underlying architecture, you are the
talking about the user experience. Just because Adobe choose to
provide a simpler UI to make actions accessible to more users,
doesn't mean that the underlying technology is also "simple".
First off, anyone who was scripting during that time knows that Adobe was
way behind the curve in implementing scriptability in their applications.
It was an embarassment for them and a big problem for AppleScript.
No argument from me! In fact, the first meeting that I ever
attended as an Adobe employee (early '97, I believe) was about
scripting support in Adobe applications.
Cal showed them that he could do it, and do it better and faster than their
own engineers could and got his product to market long before the
illustrator plug in was ready, even though they had a head start.
I am pretty sure that the AI plug-in came after Cal had
started work on PS, and also, there WAS a VERY preliminary
implementation of AS in betas of PS4 - it simply never shipped.
Plus, Cal had no assurance from Adobe that they wouldn't turn around and
implement Scriptability in the very next release of their product.
That's true.
In fact, quite to the contrary, Leonard and others publicly and frequently
announced that there were plans to do just that. AFAIK, Cal continues to
operate with the knowledge that Adobe could implement scriptability at any
time.
Sure, it is certainly reasonable to believe that some future
version of Photoshop would/will contain built-in scripting support.
Though personally, if I were Adobe, I'd just buy Photoscripter and be
done with it - though I gather that Cal wants more $$ than Adobe
thinks it's worth...
To "blame" Cal for reliance on a plug-in is pretty unfair. We should thank
him.
Blaming him for a 3rd party plug-in is reasonable, but I
agree with you about thanking him!!
I, for one, am VERY glad that Photoscripter exists and that
it shows Adobe (and others) what can be done with a good scripting
implementation on top of a high end graphics package.
If it's so trivial, then why couldn't the Adobe Engineers have done as good
a job as Main Event, working on the outside with little support from within
adobe?
Adobe's engineers (at the time) didn't have the Apple
event/AppleScript experience that Cal and Eric do/did. Today is a
different story!
Leonard
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