Re: iTunes programming question
Re: iTunes programming question
- Subject: Re: iTunes programming question
- From: has <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 17:21:02 +0100
Philip Lukidis wrote:
Thanks for your answer. Right now I'm doing preliminary research
only because I have not received any specifications yet. Perhaps
when I know more I could post a more specific question.
I had found the Apple Events documentation, but I was hoping that
Apple would have documentation on the AE necessary for
communicating with iTunes. That was quite optimistic as it turns out.
You won't find anything that specific; heck, most application
developers don't provide any documentation beyond a dictionary
resource (yes, this is lame). But if you know how to construct an AE
and you know the application's scripting interface, putting the two
together is straightforward.
Have you done application scripting before, know how the Apple Event
Object Model works, etc? If not, it'd be a good idea to do some
background reading first as the basic principles are the same from
app to app (though quality and consistency do vary). There's a good
overview of the original technology at <http://www.cs.utexas.edu/
users/wcook/papers/AppleScript/AppleScript95.pdf>. Matt Neuburg's
book might be worth a look - it's the most programmer oriented.
There's also a discussion and tutorial in the appscript documentation
on my site.
For finding your way around iTunes, it's mostly a case of read its
dictionary, look at existing scripts, experimenting yourself and
asking about when you get stuck. Suggest you start here: <http://
www.apple.com/applescript/itunes/index.html>
As for the development language, I assume for now that I would be
using Objc. This online resource http://www.cocoadev.com/index.pl?
CallAppleScriptFunction coupled with Apple's documentation is a
useful starting point for me.
Calling into AS is useful if a decent chunk of your code is written
in it. If you're doing pretty much everything in ObjC anyway then you
might as well use the Cocoa API to build your AE descriptors (easier
than using Carbon) and the Carbon API for the actual sending (Cocoa
doesn't have an equivalent to AESend, so you still have to dip into
Carbon for that). Best to ask on the AS Implementors list about doing
that <http://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/applescript-implementors>.
BTW, as Jon says, even if you do the final implementation in ObjC
it's still a good idea to prototype it in a scripting language. If
AppleScript's not your thing then you might consider Python
+appscript; Python's a good cognitive fit for folk coming from a C/
ObjC/C++ background, and a lot more popular with programmer types.
HTH
has
--
http://freespace.virgin.net/hamish.sanderson/
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