Re: The future for AppleScript
Re: The future for AppleScript
- Subject: Re: The future for AppleScript
- From: has <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 01:10:16 +0000
Martin Orpen wrote:
> You're confusing 'AppleScript' for 'Apple events'.
I'm not confusing anything - just repeating the two options available when
you use the Tiger version of Xcode - look at the Automator page on the
developer site to see for yourself.
Seen it. That page lists AppleScript and ObjC as two languages you
can write Automator Actions in [1]. It even goes so far as to say "If
the application is scriptable, AppleScript can be used for these
types of Actions. Objective-C is a good choice if the application has
a public API, such as Address Book and iChat." What it _doesn't_ say
anywhere is that you can't write a Cocoa-based actions that use Apple
events to control applications, because this would be utter baloney.
In other words, you're seeing a mutually exclusive situation where
none exists. An application and Action developer can choose to
implement an Apple event interface in their application and write an
ObjC-based Action to control it. The same developer could just as
easily write an AppleScript Action that uses only CLI or XML-RPC to
control their application.
Just because most professional programmers would rather staple their
eyeballs than write anything in AppleScript doesn't mean that they
won't embrace Apple events as long as it's presented in a form that's
palatable to them. For example, you can bet that once Tiger arrives
I'll be out there on the intarweb shamelessly touting
Python+PyObjC+appscript as the perfect platform for Action developers
who want to automate apps via Apple events but don't want to use
either ObjC (where constructing and sending Apple events is long and
tedious) or AppleScript (where constructing and sending Apple events
is a breeze and _everything else_ is long and tedious).
Therefore, Don't Panic. Just because we live in interesting times [2]
doesn't mean that the sky is automatically falling. Heck, some of us
are even cautiously hopeful that the sky could rocket off in the
opposite direction instead... :)
has
[1] i.e. Automator provides both an ObjC-based API and OSA-based
attachability as hooks for implementing Actions. There are plenty of
other languages that can talk to one or both of these mechanisms; I
suspect Apple don't list them here because they often like to give
their in-house technologies top billing (penny-wise, pound-foolish
IMO, but hey, it's their choice).
[2] As Mark A. nicely puts it.
http://freespace.virgin.net/hamish.sanderson/
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