Re: [OT] Re: Smile and FruitMenu
Re: [OT] Re: Smile and FruitMenu
- Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Smile and FruitMenu
- From: Bill Cheeseman <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 20:35:51 -0500
on 2004-12-07 7:41 PM, John C. Welch at email@hidden wrote:
> On 12/07/2004 17:12, "Bill Cheeseman" <email@hidden> wrote:
>
>> Paul Berkowitz was involved in my correspondence with Unsanity. He can chime
>> in with his own impressions, if he wants to. Speaking for myself, I feel
>> that Unsanity has gotten a bad rap, and the main reason it lives on is that
>> people keep repeating what other people say.
>
> My experience with Unsanity is the polar opposite.
I think it's just a matter of personalities, John. Rosyna has a strong
personality, and so do you, and it's easy to see the clash spiraling into
discord in the dialog you quote. As a trial lawyer by profession, I'm
usually more into eliciting the information I need, and I work hard to make
sure I don't let myself get in the way of the flow. I happen to love people
with strong personalities, though, and I stand in awe of the things that you
and Unsanity manage to accomplish, each in your own way.
The dialog I had with Unsanity was similar to yours, at the beginning, but I
stuck with it and in the end the interaction was positive on both sides.
> Then a little later, there was a similar correspondence where they said that
> any bad interactions between their hack and an application were not their
> fault, and that it was up to the Application developers to be compatible
> with them.
I've heard this criticism of Unsanity many times, and not just from you, but
I think there may be something to what Unsanity says. If Apple and others in
addition to Unsanity can and do put any application into multithreaded mode,
then there is good reason for me and any other developer to be prepared to
deal with that. In the end, my view is that for historical reasons
AppleScript is limited in its ability to handle multithreading situations,
and it isn't up to Unsanity to restrict its own capabilities because of that
AppleScript limitation. Now there is a way for Cocoa applications, at least,
to deal with the AppleScript issue easily, and Cocoa developers should use
it whether Unsanity is in the picture or not. I would guess that Carbon
developers have an equally easy solution, but I don't know.
I can easily accept that there may be other issues with Unsanity's
techniques, but I can't comment on them because I haven't run into them. My
comments are limited to the AppleScript issue, which I imagine is the same
issue Smile has with Application Enhancer. As to that issue, I think the
solution Unsanity helped me find is actually a good general programmer's
approach to running AppleScript from within an application
> If the code runs correctly without APE modules touching it, and not when
> they are touching it, that's Unsanity's bug....
Not necessarily, for the reasons given above. Another way to look at it is
that Unsanity is uncommonly imaginative and creative, and they have found
ways to do things that the market obviously wants. The fact that there
aren't many others around who use the same techniques doesn't mean that the
techniques are wrong or inappropriate, but only that others haven't yet
figured out how to use them to advantage. In the case of multithreading and
AppleScript, the more obvious fault is in AppleScript's inability to handle
multithreading robustly.
--
Bill Cheeseman - email@hidden
Quechee Software, Quechee, Vermont, USA
http://www.quecheesoftware.com
PreFab Software - http://www.prefab.com/scripting.html
The AppleScript Sourcebook - http://www.AppleScriptSourcebook.com
Vermont Recipes - http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/VermontRecipes
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Applescript-users mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
This email sent to email@hidden