Re: Tell Blocks Considered Harmful (was Re: open for access)
Re: Tell Blocks Considered Harmful (was Re: open for access)
- Subject: Re: Tell Blocks Considered Harmful (was Re: open for access)
- From: Richard Rönnbäck <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2008 06:04:22 +0100
- Thread-topic: Tell Blocks Considered Harmful (was Re: open for access)
> On Dec 16, Chris Page wrote:
>
> The question is: Do you have scripts for which blocking user interaction with
> the frontmost applicationnot the one running the scriptis necessary for the
> correct operation of your script?
Yes, hundreds of them.
Perhaps as much as 75% of the scripts I write have InDesign as their main
target, but I would say close to half of them are cross-application scripts.
That means that where I launch the application from depends on what I like
to achieve in terms of user interaction
Often I save scripts as application, just because that's the way a user
expects to launch things. Nonetheless, the purpose of it is to drive
InDesign, AND to prevent user interaction.
If I understand the change you are suggesting correctly I have hundreds,
perhaps thousands of scripts that will (possibly) break.
Worse than that is that it introduces possibilities that can't be worked
around - what exactly could I do to grab the user's attention in an app AND
prevent them from messing about?
I can easily see situations where that would create havoc.
And, me being a consultant, I know who my customers would blame for them
messing about in ways that would break the operation of the script.
Let's take an easy example: I have a droplet script/application that starts
out in the Finder where users drops InDesign documents on the app icon, then
it opens each document in InDesign, and if a spot colored object is present,
InDesign is activated, that object is selected and the user get's a list of
approved colors to change the object to, or skip the document.
The suggestion you make would force me to store a reference to the the
document, to the selection and it's properties and before the script
continues it would have to check that the document is still open, that the
selection is unchanged etc. before it can continue.
That is still no guarantee that the script would not break, because the user
could switch to InDesign and bring up a menu or modal dialog in InDesign,
since he/she is not blocked from doing so. That dialog would then prevent
any subsequent operations by the script in InDesign.
Now, you may say that I am too pessimistic about what users may do - I would
say - on the contrary!
Users are not as dumb as you think - they are dumber :-)
No, but seriously, I really can see no benefits (for me as a scripter) of
what you are suggesting, but I do see a lot of potential problems.
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