AppleScript in OS X ::)
AppleScript in OS X ::)
- Subject: AppleScript in OS X ::)
- From: "Roger Howard" <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2001 16:05:18 -0700
Initial reactions (yeah I know I'm probably late to the party):
1. It works! I'm simply amazed at how many of my scripts still work, either natively in OS X or as part of Classic.
2. Applets launch slowly... in fact it seems like Classic Applets launch faster than Mac OS X Applets (once Classic itself is booted).
3. Scripting support is sketchy, even in bundled apps... now I remember way back hearing a lot of promises about scripting in OS X, especially how apps built on the Cocoa framework will be much easier to add scriptability to (somewhat like MRJ applets in OS 8/9) - I just hope these promises are realized.
Overall I am very impressed that they managed to get such core technologies ported (or kludged) into OS X...
I can live with the slow launch times of applets for now as I assume there is the intention of speeding this up, but frankly I had hoped for much better on this front - as a scripter I feel an applet should take about as much time to enter its main event loop as a text clipping takes to open. As long as there is the intention of making the operation much tighter (at least as tight as in OS 9) then I can wait! Many of my personal scripts I use on a daily basis depend on nearly instantaneous operation to tailor my desktop to my habits/workflow... applet launching performance is critical for this.
There are so many things I'm dying to wire up in OS X with AppleScript, just waiting for the updates :)
Script Runner is cool!
Presumably some of the current AppleScript/OSX implementation is a hack relying on classic technologies and we can begin to see some things breaking, or at least needing extension (such as the use of creator codes)... is there a roadmap showing where AppleScript's underlying architecture will be moving with respect to its dependencies on native OS X technologies?
Also, there was once great talk about AppleScript coming into its own as a more robust development platform, with more powerful development tools and more push to build complete apps (especially on OS X) with it... where does this bit of rumors stand now? Pardon me for rumor-mongering, I guess I'm just wondering what the long term plans for AppleScript are - after the current phase of getting it up and running and relatively bugfree is over.
Thanks everyone for a great new OS which continues to support such a great old technology!
Cheers,
Roger