Re: Re. third-party dependencies [was Re: Stock Quotes using AppleScript]
Re: Re. third-party dependencies [was Re: Stock Quotes using AppleScript]
- Subject: Re: Re. third-party dependencies [was Re: Stock Quotes using AppleScript]
- From: "John C. Welch" <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:00:05 -0400
- Thread-topic: Re. third-party dependencies [was Re: Stock Quotes using AppleScript]
On 3/15/09 6:03 PM, "Shane Stanley" <email@hidden> wrote:
>> On the other hand, a lot of that kind of thing is provided by various
>> applications, and AppleScript was always meant as more of a glue language
>> than one that stands on its own...
>
> But if you want to do something as basic as sort a list of stuff, you often
> can't hand it off to an application. And the idea of having to launch an
> app, create a document in it, set its contents to a string, tell it to
> change case, get the contents of the document, and close the document --
> just to do a case-conversion -- is beyond not funny and into the realm of
> hysterical.
Hence the bit you left off about Apple needing to make up their mind about
AppleScript and decide what its going to be.
But either way, Apple can't just say "oh look, we'll ship <osax> with the
OS" as easy as people think, nor can IT departments support them as easy as
people think.
I find that most things look easy until you try them.
>
> It's not a matter of supplying every obscure possibility or trying to keep
> up with the Joneses, just a matter of making the language more usable.
Usable to whom? My list sorting needs are pretty simple, so I'm happy with
what I have. It could be better, but it's not a stick in the eye. I'd like
better string manipulation, so that's annoying, but there's ways to deal
with it sans osax, so again, meh.
The stuff that chaps my hide has *nothing* to do with silliness like string
manipulation. I'd like to be able to easily get a properly escaped file URL
that I can then email to someone so they can click on the link and see the
file on the proper network share. That's far too hard.
I'd like to see better network/user/machine preferences setup support. More
preference pane support outside of GUI scripting. Better interfaces into
some of the hardware setups that I can do manually via menus, etc.
But for someone not in my line of work, *they* are going to say "who cares?"
and be just as right as when I say that for what is to me, esoterica. Who's
right?
>
> As it happens, I've been doing some stuff in InDesign lately, including some
> in javascript. One of the things that struck me again is just how clear and
> readable a compound whose clause is can be in AppleScript. You can look at
> old code and see in an instant what was happening, without having to dig
> through multiple loops of iteration. But then I looked at sections of code
> doing string manipulation with TIDs rather than basic commands like split
> and so on, and was struck by exactly the reverse.
Since I find nothing about dot languages easy to read, at worst, Applescript
is a draw. But that's subjective.
--
Cthulu for President!
Why vote for a *lesser* evil?
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