Re: Producing Unicode-only characters [was: Finding \t, \r, \n reliably]
Re: Producing Unicode-only characters [was: Finding \t, \r, \n reliably]
- Subject: Re: Producing Unicode-only characters [was: Finding \t, \r, \n reliably]
- From: has <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2005 14:09:39 +0100
Emmanuel wrote:
>
> >Right. I guess I'm asking (pleading?) for a simple equivalent to ASCII
> >character and ASCII number
>
>Shane, it's a pity you can't afford using Smile. You would waste less
>time asking (pleading?) for new built-in features.
Two thoughts:
1. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to expect a modern high-level scripting language like AppleScript to provide a decent standard library. Compare it to the Tcl, Perl, Python and Ruby distributions that also ship on OS X. OK, there's always debates and arguments amongst language developers and users about what constitutes too little or too much built-in functionality, but it's safe to say that AS easily falls into the 'too little' category. At the very least, AS ought to provide decent text, math and list manipulation tools, along with a standardised library import mechanism to make vanilla extensions easier to develop and use. Scripting languages are all about 'ease of use', and providing very commonly used functionality out of the box (find and replace, basic trig, list sorting, etc.) is an important part of that, and somewhere AppleScript definitely falls short.
2. The AppleScript team is very limited in manpower and resources, and inevitably has to prioritise their lengthy TO DO list. That means focussing first on developing and improving essential infrastructure like the Cocoa Scripting framework (without which, _everyone_ is stuffed) and important new products like Automator, followed by fixing existing bugs (themselves prioritised according to cost vs benefit) and adding essential new features, with creating non-essential new features last on the list. i.e. The lack of home comforts may irritate, but I think it'd irritate a lot more if all your scriptable apps suddenly stopped working because Cocoa Scripting wasn't being adequately maintained.:) Third-parties don't have the same set of responsibilities, so it's much easier for them to concentrate on the non-essential [from Apple's, if not its users' POV] comforts. It's not quite the same as having that functionality bundled, but y'know, no standard library is infinite in size and sooner or later you'll _always_ end up running out of built-in functionality and have to resort to third-party solutions or rolling your own. With AppleScript you just hit that point rather sooner than usual.
IOW, you're both basically right... but assuming you're both pragmatists rather than ideologues then there's to be had from dwelling on it. Hey, it still beats death and taxes. ;)
has
--
http://freespace.virgin.net/hamish.sanderson/
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