Re: Dictionary possibilities [Re: Interesting... AppleScript X ??]
Re: Dictionary possibilities [Re: Interesting... AppleScript X ??]
- Subject: Re: Dictionary possibilities [Re: Interesting... AppleScript X ??]
- From: email@hidden (Michael Sullivan)
- Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 21:46:04 -0400
- Organization: Society for the Incurably Pompous
>
On Fri, Sep 27, 2002 at 12:02:12PM +0100, has wrote:
>
[snip]
>
> Further possibilites:
>
[snip]
>
> 2. The dictionary viewer/source editor distinction might be lessened, or
>
> even removed altogether, through integration. Once your dictionary
>
> effectively becomes a supercharged DTD/schema, your editing tools can
>
> also exploit the information encoded within. One possibility is that you
>
> can do away with dumb text-based source code and its associated
>
> parse->complain|parse->compile cycle, and have an intelligent object
>
> editor able to pipe the appropriate item to you [object
>
> reference/control block/variable/literal/etc] almost before you type it.
>
> Sort of the difference between a text editor and a word processor; and
>
> would relegate your pleasantly pretty-printing but otherwise completely
>
> dumb AS editor to dinosaur status overnight.
>
Wouldn't this then limit users to editing AS source with Apple's provided
>
editor? Isn't using plain-text source an _advantage_, as it can easily be
>
edited with the user's choice of text editors (BBEdit, vim, whatever),
>
being opened in the script editor only for compilation? Please correct me
>
if I'm not understanding something, but it seems like making AS even more
>
proprietary than it already is would be a Bad Thing...
No, it would not. Compiled scripts are already compiled to a bytecode
format. The key is not "plaintext", but a published spec.
The primary advantage of plaintext is the ability to pass it around in
email easily, or make changes to it with *any* editor, not just one
specifically designed for applescript.
This can be a big advantage, and I highly recommend plaintext formats
whereever there is nothing of real importance to be gained from using a
different format. It gripes me to no end that so many mailers do not
save messages in plaintext, so that when their rickety databases get
corrupted, you simply lose your mail with no way to retrieve it short of
deconstructing their data format. (Hello ASIP mail server -- WTFWTT?).
But a code program like this, I think there are potentially major
advantages from storing code in a more complex data format, *IF* it
could be made robust enough. Somehow I doubt this would work in
practice.
One of the things I love about lisp family languages (even though many
folks hate the parentheses) is that the plain-text source code *is* the
parse tree. The parens define the parse tree, so with an editor that
indents to paren levels, you can see the parse tree visually looking at
nothing but the text file.
If I ever get a huge amount of free time, I'm going to seriously look at
doing an OSA extension for some version of Common Lisp.
Michael
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