RE: What's the biggest barrier to wider AS adoption?
RE: What's the biggest barrier to wider AS adoption?
- Subject: RE: What's the biggest barrier to wider AS adoption?
- From: Brennan <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2001 01:01:07 +0200
has <email@hidden> wrote
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Barriers against wider adoption within the Mac world: 1. not enough
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Mac-based geeks in the world, and 2. most regular folks...
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*don't need automation anyway
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*don't realise the benefits of it
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*aren't aware of the facilities that exist for doing it
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*don't have a mind for the concepts and skills needed to design and
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assemble automated systems
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*may not find that time/effort saved by automating a process adequately
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offsets the work needed to set it up in the first place (especially if
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starting from scratch)
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*don't have the luxury of time and resources needed to develop the skills
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in the first place
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*would rather have a short-term result today than a long-term solution next
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week.
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Along with what everybody else has said about learning curves,
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documentation, etc, etc. But I think human factors are important too.
One human factor I think is being overlooked is that those applications with really good dictionaries, such as Tex-Edit Plus, have clusters of scripters gathering around them producing excellent scripts intended for non-geeks. As far as I can tell, many non-geeks do make use of these scripts too. Some of Tex-Edit's most powerful features are provided by scripts. (e.g HTML->Styled text, somewhat misleadingly named as HTML->Mac).
For an app to have good AS support, doesn't just benefit the scripters, it also benefits 'ordinary' users who can use the scripts made by the geeks.
I've written several scripts which I know are being used professionally by folks who wouldn't know a text item delimiter from their elbow. These are not custom solutions either, they are scripts with general utility (although admittedly within a specialised field).
Surely this 'human factor' is as important as the fact that most folks have not the time or inclination to write their own scripts.
What might this suggest? Well, perhaps that Apple could usefully provide us with tools to 'dress up' our scripts and make them more open to user friendly interaction. Providing a standard way to add menu items, and a plain text output window to applets easily would already go a long way in this direction. (I am aware of third party solutions for these).
Similarly, exposing more of the toolbox (or Cocoa or Carbon or whatever in OSX) in the standard set of additions, rather as Akua does, would be of great assistance when making scripts easy to transport.
-Brennan