Re: Creating a folder on the desktop
Re: Creating a folder on the desktop
- Subject: Re: Creating a folder on the desktop
- From: Michael Sullivan BCE <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2005 16:30:11 -0400
On Sep 6, 2005, at 22:22, Bill Briggs wrote:
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. The required syntax changes based on the
whim of the application developer (or the fact that what Cocoa
frameworks provide basically sucks). There's no control, no clearing
house for good behaviour, and you get all manner of nonsense. I've
worked through enough trashy AppleScript implementations in the last 8
years to know it's not at all as well mannered as real programming
languages. Get AppleScript to cough up a file name for a FrameMaker
file and then tell me it's consistent.
This isn't really a problem with applescript, per se -- it's a problem
with OSA scripting in general.
And it's a problem in other languages as well, whenever you want to
write extensions to existing software, you face this problem. Libary
set X has blah-de-blah conventions, and library set Y has blo-doo-blo
conventions. And if you try writing extensions for some programs it
gets really horrendous because of the bad design and undocumented
behavior, much like a bad applescript implementation.
The difference is one of expectation, and the fact that it's hard to do
significant amounts of work in Applescript without calling other
applications.
There are some issues with applescript itself, but they are mostly with
the monopoly implementation, not the language (which is actually pretty
good, IMO). With a few key additions and an implementation that does
not assume all you do in AS is quick hacks (so loses the stack size
limit among other things), AS would become a pretty good language.
I've done a fair bit of vanilla or mostly vanilla AS programming, and
it's a *lot* easier and more elegant (although much slower run-time)
than working in C, C++ or Fortran. As soon as I start trying to script
some OS feature, or application, it can get hellish. But that's not
AS, it's the problematic osa implementation of the software I'm trying
to script. Scripting some software (written by people who really use
OSA scripting, like Smile/SD/TexEdit) is no problem at all.
in the programming literature, you see complaints all the time about
having to interconnect with badly designed APIs. That's what's
happening when you applescript a lot of programs. You have to deal
with an API that isn't well designed, because scripting implementation
is an afterthought for a lot of programmers. Even when the designs are
good, every program is different. That's a problem with the OSA in
general, not with Applescript the language.
Michael
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