Re: Where is the Missing Link?.
Re: Where is the Missing Link?.
- Subject: Re: Where is the Missing Link?.
- From: Paul Berkowitz <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2001 10:16:18 -0700
On 9/25/01 9:06 AM, "Paul Skinner" <email@hidden> wrote:
>
I think this may do what you want without adding any OSAX to your
>
system. Not that that would be a bad thing.
I can't imagine that Rachel has any objection to adding an osax. She wants
simplicity. She wants to do in as few lines as possible, with minimal
learning curve, what she can do with one line in DOS. She does not want a
100-line mammoth which she can't yet understand. Given her personal
conditions, she is hardly likely to be working for a big company with IT
overlords who forbid scripting additions. Without that consideration,
objections to osaxen strike me as pure superstition, or maybe more like
religious proscriptions of some zealot sect. Rachel just wants to get a job
done. Emmanuel's 'catalog' sounds like just the ticket.
The trouble with all the great scripting additions is that until you know
about them, you just don't know they exist nor what they can so. AppleScript
is so de-centralized, it does take a very long time to amass the knowledge
you need. There's no one place to read up on everything that would encompass
AppleScript language, Standard Additions, other additions, application
terminology. <
http://www.osaxen.com> would be a good place to go when you're
stuck, and just look around.
Or ask here.
I will never forget my introduction to AppleScript, when I spent four days
studying the ASLG twice from cover to cover, trying vainly to find out how
to bring an application to the front, which I _knew_ was possible. I just
couldn't remember what the term was, nor did I find it in the ASLG. Finally,
someone here told me that it was 'activate', and that this was actually a
"built-in scripting addition". If it's an addition, why is it built in? If
it's actually built in to the AppleScript extension (which it is), why is it
an "addition", described in the Standard Additions Guide although it's not a
Standard Addition and is not in the Standard Additions dictionary, rather
than in the ASLG? In fact, this must be a purely historical accident, in
that it was added (back in the Middle Ages) first as an addition _before_ it
got built in. It _should_ be in the ASLG as part of the AppleScript
language, which should be revised to include 'activate'.
AppleScript is full of illogicalities like this, mixed in with its eminent
basic logicality. This makes it harder to learn than it should be. It needs
a thorough, official overhaul, more authoritative than an O'Reilly's book.
Let's wait a year until OS X is firmly in place and AppleScript for OS X
with it, and until more important things like whose filters for lists and
records have been added to the language. Then perhaps a revision of the
whole language plus a re-thinking of the Help guides might be in order?
Perhaps Apple could also work with a few applications to set a sample model
of an application's AppleScript Reference, and could even start
co-ordinating them with uniform format. A multi-volume AppleScript Reference
set for scriptable applications (in PDF) plus osaxen would provide somewhere
central for everyone learning AppleScript to consult without tearing their
hair out.
--
Paul Berkowitz