Re: Locating AppleScript Beginnings
Re: Locating AppleScript Beginnings
- Subject: Re: Locating AppleScript Beginnings
- From: Michelle Steiner <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 00:42:49 -0700
On 5/29/01 10:04 PM, John W Baxter <email@hidden> wrote:
>
[Details subject to correction by those with better memories.] --John
Here's some more info, not directly related, but interesting to some,
perhaps.
In December 1992, Richard Scorer added scripting abilities to MacWrite
Pro during his Christmas vacation. It had no aete resource, and was
accessible only through Frontier, if I recall correctly. This was the
basis for the Applescripting functionality that was put into a later
release (1.5, if my memory is correct); it did not follow the object
model, though.
During development of 1.5, one of the marketing people asked me if I
could write a script that would translate MacWrite II files into MacWrite
Pro files; at least one large customer required an automated method of
converting files or they wouldn't upgrade. By the time I got finished
with the script, you could drop a file, a folder, or a disk (or any
combination of them) on the droplet, and it would translate every file
that McWrite Pro could read (using XTND), giving you the option of
replacing the original or not. Of course, you would have to have
sufficient disk space to store the files if you were not replacing the
originals.
Marketing liked this script so much that they included it on the shipping
disks, along with another script I wrote to batch print files. (it was a
simple modification of the translation script.) Both of these scripts
were later rewritten by someone else at Claris to work with ClarisWorks,
and they shipped with that application.
At the time, I was the only person on the team who knew Applescript well
enough to write scripts for MacWrite Pro, or to test the scripting
ability. And I knew Applescript only well enough to do that testing; in
fact, that's how I learned the language--it was learn as you go. It was
also the first time I wrote recursive code outside a classroom, and
therefore it was when I started to actually understand recursion.
--Michelle
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| Michelle Steiner | We're not human beings having a spiritual |
| | experience. We're spiritual beings |
| email@hidden | having a human experience. |
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