Re: Migrating scripting additions to Mac OS X
Re: Migrating scripting additions to Mac OS X
- Subject: Re: Migrating scripting additions to Mac OS X
- From: Shane Stanley <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 17:14:50 +1000
On 26/6/01 1:39 PM +1000, JollyRoger, email@hidden, wrote:
>
Let me ask you this: How much of an impact has the fact that URL Access
>
Scripting is an application had on you? :)
Less than the fact that it's had more than its share of bugs.
>
Do you dwell on it every time
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you use it? Do you even think about it? Me? Nope. I just use it, and it
>
works fine.
But URL Access is nothing like a lot of scripting additions -- it has never
even _been_ a scripting addition. I don't see the relevance.
>
My point is that scriptable applications are a perfectly viable
>
medium for extending AppleScript, arguably a better medium than scripting
>
additions - and you can use that medium NOW in Mac OS X.
And my point is that making some scripting additions into apps is a
ridiculous way of making AppleScript more tortuous to learn and use than it
is already. Why, for example, put ReGex in an app? Or Jon's Commands? Or
StuffIt Commands, or XML Tools, or the various text utilities? It's crazy --
you're trying to throw the baby out with the bath water.
>
>
> To update them to OS X scripting additions, according to the developers I've
>
> spoken to, is not yet fully documented. Maybe that's what's holding many of
>
> them back.
>
>
Why do that when it's easier just to turn them into scriptable apps?
Because what's easier for users matters more to me than what's easier for
developers. Heck, haven't you just seen the long thread here recently from
people who don't even want to type "tell application "Finder""? There's a
message there.
And then there's the not-so-small issue of speed. Frankly, if there's a
significant speed difference, that alone would be a good enough reason to
jump one way or the other in some cases.
I also like the idea of facilities sitting there, not using resources unless
called. With apps, that means launch times, and with OS X, that spells long
delays.
>
I can see that SOME AS extensions are better off being scripting additions;
but only a few.
And I can see that some additions would be better off as apps, but of the
ones I've spent any time with, only a few.
--
Shane Stanley, email@hidden