Re: What makes AppleScript difficult
Re: What makes AppleScript difficult
- Subject: Re: What makes AppleScript difficult
- From: Brett Conlon <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2007 21:00:07 +1100
I'd like to second Rich's thoughts here.
When I was stumbling through learning how to script I sooooo longed
for the application's dictionary to have example scripts (at least
one) in each section so I could see how the definitions could be used,
even in a generic context.
Heck, the unix man pages have examples...
Cojcolds
On 05/12/2007, at 5:26 PM, Richard Doust wrote:
Chris Page asked that anyone who might want to say what they think
makes AppleScript difficult do so in a separate thread. He asked
that the answer be specific to the language. Problem is, in order
for a language to be usable, there have to be libraries. With
AppleScript, it's all about the applications that offer up their
functionality via the scripting interface.
I'm reading O'Reilly's AppleScript, The Definitive Guide (2004),
pages 325 and 326, and all over the place it says, "How do you think
you would do this? Well, you would be wrong. Here's how you do it,
and the problem is, the Dictionaries don't tell you to do it that
way, so how are you supposed to find out?"
There's very little feedback when things don't work. Anyone who
produces a scriptable application should take responsibility for
documenting the scriptability, and a Dictionary alone is not enough.
Makes the language hard to use. A language is never just the
language, it's the language and the libraries, or, in this case, the
applications that make their functionality available through
AppleScript.
Just my $.02.
Rich
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