And applications that weren't designed to be scriptable shouldn't handle “display alert” and “display dialog”.
In OS 9 FBAs and other apps without a user interface would crash if you sent them a display dialog. But they do, because the additions system forces them to.
Well, that is what should be fixed. That's the bath water.
The language used by users, from the newest neophyte, to the most experienced scripter, is the baby.
>The phrase "system modal" has now been mentioned twice. Can this be done via applescript and, if so, how?
>Not that I am aware of. And you will be hard pressed to find any software that uses them, because they are undesirable, generally. They should be used rarely.
And, it wouldn't be that useful because while a dialog is displayed the script halts operation. What would be really useful is the ability to shutout all user interaction while the script runs. I know that's something programmers shouldn't do, but it is something a Scripter might want to do to our own machines.
>>>Correction: they *apparently* work. They work for certain cases, as long as scripting additions and applications don't change.
How is that different from anything AppleScript.We are totally at the mercy of Apple and our app developers and things often break from one release to another. OSAX have been one of the more reliable features of the technology over the years.
As a result, attempts to improve things involves a certain amount of risk, because some scripts incidentally rely on some details of behavior that they did not intend to rely upon and which were never guaranteed to behave the way they do. I'm trying to assess what scripts rely upon and how many scripts do so.
>>>>Scripts that are more specific about their intent, which makes them more likely to continue working in the long term, in a wider variety of circumstances, and makes it easier for script, addition and application developers to change things in the future without breaking as many scripts.
There really isn't anything inspecific about sending an OSAX call to an app. We want a random number, or a date string, or a dialog or ascii character right there at that line of our script and we don't care what happens under the hood to provide it, we just want it.
As for developers, they've done a very remarkable job over the last dozen years or so avoiding terminology conflicts, and allowing OSAX commands to live inside their application tells. There's no reason to assume that suddenly they'll start dropping the ball.
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