Re: on neophytes vs perfectionists (was Re: Tell Blocks Considered Harmful)
Re: on neophytes vs perfectionists (was Re: Tell Blocks Considered Harmful)
- Subject: Re: on neophytes vs perfectionists (was Re: Tell Blocks Considered Harmful)
- From: Chris Page <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2008 01:41:05 -0800
On Dec 18, 2008, at 12:36 AM, Paul Scott wrote:
1) The language syntax isn't very rigid and the documentation is
sparse. I find example scripts all over the place with syntax that
is barely mentioned in the AppleScript Language Guide, or utterly
missing.
Have you looked at the new ASLG that was created earlier this year? We
tried to correct a lot of the problems with the older one:
<http://developer.apple.com/documentation/applescript/conceptual/applescriptlangguide/
>
Obviously, tastes vary, but although at first I thought AppleScript
was pretty loose and wild, after I learned the actual language it
turned out to be more rigid than I first thought. It may sometimes
have more syntactic variations than I think were necessary, but
they're typically just synonyms to allow you to make the English less
awkward in some instances, not different semantics, and they're
optional. Heck, it's simpler than Perl and saner than some parts of C
syntax.
I really appreciate being able to optionally use "the" as I can in
English, for example.
2) The documentation is somewhat cryptic, making references to
concepts, terms, and syntax that aren't defined.
If you have any specific examples, please let us know, preferably with
a bug report: <http://bugreporter.apple.com/>
4) Applescript can't run by itself the way a shell script can. It
has to connect to a window server, so it can't run well out of
crontab or launchd without the user being "logged in".
We are aware of this limitation of osascript. It's a limitation for
us, too.
5) It's not suited for generalized scripting. Any use beyond
controlling an active GUI application is severely limited.
Can you provide a specific example, to give me some idea of what you
mean?
On Dec 17, 2008, at 10:32 PM, Chris Page wrote:
Myself and many like me use AppleScript all the time, because it's
the best solution for some jobs, but we need it to scale better.
It *is* the best solution for some jobs. And the worst for a whole
lot more. Maybe this is what you mean by "need it to scale better".
It's interesting that I can use AppleScript with Interface Builder
to write an application. But why would I?
One sort of "scaling" is that you should be able to write libraries in
AppleScript without resorting to writing a scripting addition or a
scriptable application. You tend to be stuck putting all the code you
need into a single, monolithic file and using copy/paste to "share"
code.
--
Chris Page
The other, other AppleScript Chris
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
AppleScript-Users mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
Archives: http://lists.apple.com/archives/applescript-users
This email sent to email@hidden