Re: What makes AppleScript difficult
Re: What makes AppleScript difficult
- Subject: Re: What makes AppleScript difficult
- From: Paul Scott <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2007 10:23:47 -0800
(thought: providing much better type info in the dicts would be a
very very good thing, providing a way for developers to add
documentation to them would be good too)
John Clayton
I agree with your point about libraries being important to a
language, and it's worth talking about library issues in detail,
but “scriptable applications” is an unbounded set of software I
don't have direct control over and I'm…er…especially interested in
hearing about problems with the language proper.
--
Chris Page
The other, other AppleScript Chris
John makes an important point that I think Chris should take seriously.
The problem isn't with AppleScript's syntax or its anglicized grammar,
the problem is that there *really is no dictionary*. Imagine if you
looked up "euphemism" in the English dictionary and found this entry:
"noun - used to describe an object; class is greek word; properties
are description as string, and target as string" Okay, I know where it
fits in the grammar, and I know I need a description for some target,
but how do I use it?
Unless it's written in the dictionary "a mild expression substituted
for one thought to be too harsh, example 'AppleScript is tough' is a
euphemism for 'AppleScript blows chunks' " then I'm pretty well stuck.
And an example alone is *not* enough! I repeat, an example alone is
*NOT* enough.
What Apple should do to "fix" AppleScript is provide a hyperlink in
the dictionary to *real* documentation on the verb, noun or whatever,
and another hyperlink to a *real* example (or two). Having the
hyperlink framework in the dictionary would encourage developers to
provide necessary information. Note that the hyperlink targets should
become part of the dictionary itself, although those targets may
contain hyperlinks to supplementary Web based material. Apple should
also stress in *all* AppleScript documentation how important it is to
author a good dictionary with those hyperlinks fully populated.
Certainly, it's up to application developers to actually use the
framework properly, but Apple could start the ball rolling by
providing a good set of documentation for their own applications; even
if it's just external documentation.
What makes Microsoft's VBA (gag) more useful than AppleScript is the
abundance of easily accessible (local) documentation on the Objects
and their properties being manipulated; and how they fit in the
application's "big picture." Microsoft and most other vendors do a
pretty good job of making the scripting language useful by providing
decent—hell, *any*—documentation. I would hope that AppleScript would
be a better solution—it has the potential to compete—but it isn't;
precisely because of it's lack of documentation.
Somewhere in the back of my mind is the memory of having read that
"the AppleScript dictionary is self documenting and everything you
need to automate applications." This erroneous assumption I think is
at the root of AppleScript's problems. But if the dictionary was
complete, the assumption would be valid.Attachment:
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