Re: Listing apps in launch order
Re: Listing apps in launch order
- Subject: Re: Listing apps in launch order
- From: Anthony Alireza Abud <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 16:46:05 -0500
on 1/28/01 1:33 PM, Bill Cheeseman at email@hidden wrote:
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on 1/28/01 11:57 AM, Matthew Fischer at email@hidden wrote:
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>
> It's my understanding (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) that if you
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> don't
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> quit applications in the reverse order of the order they were launched that
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> you don't get back all the memory they have allocated to them. Sometimes if I
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> have a bunch of things running, I can't remember what order they were
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> launched
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> in.
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>
>
> How would I go about using Applescript to get a list of my currently running
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> applications in the order they were launched?
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>
It isn't that you don't get all your memory back (except in the case of some
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ill-behaved apps). The problem is that your memory will become fragmented,
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with two or more smaller free space areas, instead of one larger area. This
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should only hurt if you try thereafter to launch an application that needs a
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larger contiguous free space area than any of those you have left, or if you
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thereafter launch several smaller apps that do fit but which then leave a
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few fragments of free space that are too small individually to let any
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application launch.
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>
In a typical user's experience (use very few apps, shut down every night),
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this problem will rarely if ever crop up.
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>
Caveat. The foregoing is based on info I acquired a very long time ago. It's
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possible that memory management is much smarter now in the classic Mac OS.
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The problem does not arise at all in Mac OS X.
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>
I'm not aware of any simple way you can use AppleScript to resolve this
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issue. There have been several utilities over the years that show you a
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graphical representation of your current memory space and usage, but I'm not
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aware that any of them is scriptable in a useful way. A 1998 utility,
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ProcessWatcher 3.2, is scriptable, but the dictionary doesn't suggest it
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will tell you what you want to know (the application itself doesn't, either
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-- it just lists all running processes), and I got errors trying to use the
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AppleScript commands it does implement. I normally use Memory Mapper 1.5,
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another 1998 utility, which has a nice graphical representation of your
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memory map that shows you what you want to know -- but it isn't scriptable.
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>
You could write a stay-open AppleScript application, with an idle handler
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that fires every few seconds, to run in the background at all times. It
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could be written to notice when every new process launches and when it
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quits, keeping a constantly-updated list of the order in which current
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processes were launched. With some careful arithmetic, you could probably
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even record the amount of memory each uses and track the number and size of
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your free space fragments. But it would be a lot of work for a very small
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payoff.
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>
-
>
Bill Cheeseman, Quechee, Vermont <mailto:email@hidden>
>
>
The AppleScript Sourcebook
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<http://www.AppleScriptSourcebook.com/>
>
Vermont Recipes-A Cocoa Cookbook
>
<http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/VermontRecipes/>
>
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>
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>
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>
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>
Although the previous may be true, I am no programming or scripting expert
and if some one with more expertise could take a look at that dictionary and
understand how to do it and post it here I would be much obliged as would
the original individual who posted.