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Re: Creating a folder on the desktop
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Re: Creating a folder on the desktop


  • Subject: Re: Creating a folder on the desktop
  • From: has <email@hidden>
  • Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2005 09:56:41 +0100

Bill Briggs wrote:

> Oooo, I think you're on thin ice here Matt. I'd never take that statement as gospel. Real programming languages - let's take assembler, C, C++, or even Fortran as an example - have a fixed syntax that you can rely on to work every time in every situation.

Syntax issues are orthogonal to whether or not a language is 'real' or not (e.g. see Lisp). Matt is quite correct: AppleScript is a Turing-complete language, and very traditional in its design and behaviour once you get past the whacky compiler features.


> The example in question, the difference between Finder and System Events syntax to construct a new folder, shows just how it's NOT like a real programming language.

Fallacy. This is an application issue and has nothing to with the AppleScript language - you have exactly the same problem whether you use JavaScriptOSA, Perl+Mac::Glue, Python+appscript, C, etc. AppleScript makes it harder to tell where the language stuff ends and the application stuff starts due to daffy compiler tricks obfuscating the join, but it's still there.


>But it's the very nature of AppleScript - that fact that it provides inter-application communications - that makes it impossible to nail down a rigid and consistent syntax.

Incorrect. IAC does not require a malleable syntax, as the aforementioned JavaScriptOSA, Perl+Mac::Glue, Python+appscript, C, etc. will all attest. Again, you're confusing application issues for language issues.


>Each developer has the opportunity to make as big or as little a mess of it as he or she wishes.

Yup. Though Apple deserves at least part of the blame for not providing greater support and guidance over the years; the SIG, for example, is a great document but really should've been provided 10 years earlier. (Imagine what applications' graphical interfaces would be like if Apple hadn't written the HIG till 1995...)


> Faced with a new dictionary for a new application for which you have no documentation you know exactly what you have to do.

And there's the real culprit: grossly inadequate documentation of applications' scripting interfaces. Go jump on a developer today.

has
--
http://freespace.virgin.net/hamish.sanderson/
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