What makes AppleScript a PITA for me
What makes AppleScript a PITA for me
- Subject: What makes AppleScript a PITA for me
- From: "John C. Welch" <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:33:30 -0600
- Thread-topic: What makes AppleScript a PITA for me
Title: What makes AppleScript a PITA for me
On 12/04/2007 23:57 PM, "Chris Page" <email@hidden> wrote:
> I'd like to hear (on the list--please don't send me questions and
> complaints directly) specific issues that make using AppleScript
> difficult, especially regarding the language itself. (Please start a
> new subject if you do post.)
Ohhhh...get comfy ;-)
- Would it KILL Apple application teams to document changes to AppleScript? I mean, I know in general that release notes beyond “does stuff gooder” is against some policy, but random undocumented changes that, when reported, come back with “known issue” make me want to leave palm prints on people’s skulls.
- In a similar vein, would it kill Apple application teams to FIX glaring AppleScript errors OUTSIDE of a major release? Mail being the best example. It’s SO much fun to tell people that if they want a functional applescript experience in Mail, regress to panther, upgrade to leopard, because tiger is full of the suck, and it’s never going to be fixed.
- Release notes in Xcode for ASS when the new version is released? Hey, THERE’S a good idea.
- Being able to use DTS incidents for AppleScript problems. This one pisses me off big time. The last time I tried to use a DTS incident for this, I got told “Oh, DTS doesn’t support AppleScript, use the mailing list”. A sphincter says what? That’s crap, but hey, has it changed? I don’t know, but if I try it again, I guess I’ll find out...
- “Try it and hope it works” is not a great way to find out about things. Like DTS incidents. Or changes to scripting implementations. Or anything. I’m not a test pilot here, “try it and see if it works” is not acceptable.
- Did ASS get a functional debugger in Xcode 3? We Don’t Know. Will We Ever Know? We Don’t Know. Is there any point in asking about this? We Don’t Know. We Don’t Know makes people want to Drink A Lot and Use Other Tools. Why does Apple want us to hate AppleScript on mondays, want us to love it on tuesdays, deny its existance wed-fri, and praise it to the heavens on Saturdays and alternating sundays? Did Sybil set up the marketing for this?
- I’m not asking for major revisions every third Friday, but AppleScript’s text handling sucks. Totally. It would be really nice to see incremental improvements so that I don’t have to dump out to shell every time I want to mung a string or some such in less than 52 steps and a handler.
- I’m glad that AppleScript loves it some designers and publishers. Could it start to love it some IT people? ARD was a start, but extending the language into things like sysadmin functional areas would be nice.
- I’m still willing to eat a deep-fried sock during Macworld or the WWDC if FCP gets a proper AppleScript implementation.
- Sometimes the error messages are...less than useful, and when you are talking about a language that’s as dynamic as AppleScript, error messages need to be some verbose bastiges.
- More info from Apple about AppleScript. It doesn’t have to be big stuff, but honestly, making someone use the ASLG as the first reference blows. A bi-weekly/monthly bit on the AppleScript site, even if it’s in the Developer site, talking about lists, records, etc., would be a HUGE help to people.
john
--
"There may be no stupid questions, but there are an awful lot of
inquisitive idiots"
-Bill, digital.forest tech support
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