Re: Scripting Additions: Embracing the Horror of Unix
Re: Scripting Additions: Embracing the Horror of Unix
- Subject: Re: Scripting Additions: Embracing the Horror of Unix
- From: Timothy Bates <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2002 12:44:06 +1100
On 2/2/02 12:09 PM, "Jon Pugh" <email@hidden> wrote:
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I think my largest point here is that in Mac OS 9, the simplest way to add
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functionality to AppleScript was to write a scripting addition instead of an
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application. Now, in Mac OS X, applications are theoretically easier to
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write, and scripting additions can generally be replaced by calls to the
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shell, since they are generally doing simple things that can't be done in
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straight AppleScript. That means the incentive to write a new scripting
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addition in OS X is fairly low, as a built-in workaround is pretty easy,
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considering.
Wrapped shell scripts are slow. They are also much more easily perverted
(someone just rewrites your cp() handler to say "rm -rf *" and bingo, you
have an iTunes installer :-)
Finally, as applescript has no way of including scripts in the way that it
includes extensions, they must be explicitly included in all scripts. Way
painful.
If you write Jons again, I predict 10,000 downloads in the first week.
Paradoxically, Jons is one of the less important osax, top of the list being
Tanaka, RegEx and Akua.
Speaking of Tanaka (written in hypertalk I believe?) I wonder what the scope
is for using AppleScript studio to create a scriptable app (not extension)
exposing all the cocoa functionality (including string handling etc) plus
some GUI calls (like a progress handler, complex dialog constrcutor etc.)?