Re: InDesign Server speed?
Re: InDesign Server speed?
- Subject: Re: InDesign Server speed?
- From: Shane Stanley <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2010 10:18:13 +1000
- Thread-topic: InDesign Server speed?
On 9/9/10 9:01 AM, "Tim Mansour" <email@hidden> wrote:
> FWIW: What's holding me back from getting into AppleScriptObjC is that
> I'm (a) unsure of the benefits and (b) unsure of where to start with
> learning.
Well (a) is pretty easy to answer: it gives you the ability to put decent
interfaces on your scripts, and it gives you access to most of Cocoa, so you
can do a zillion things you couldn't do before. That might be some of the
basic things AS lacks -- decent string manipulation, number formatting,
sorting -- to, well, just about anything.
In the case of interfaces, for basic stuff there's not too much to learn --
you can write essentially normal AS code and connect it to the interface
elements in Interface Builder rather than code.
For the other stuff, you are getting into the realm of Cocoa and you're
essentially rewriting Objective-C calls in AppleScript. Honestly, that's
where you get to feel like a newbie starting all over again. But the beauty
of AppleScriptObjC, from an experienced scripter's point of view, is that
you're still in a familiar environment -- you may have to play with
Objective-C methods, but you play with them in the context of normal
repeats, ifs, and so on, and with the standard AS classes of text, integer,
real, list and record. So it's a heck of a lot easier than plunging full-on
into Objective-C, and you can pick up small bits at a time, as you need
them.
(I can imagine people like Ed looking at AppleScriptObjC code and weeping
(and who knows what Cal Simone would say), and I have a good deal of
sympathy for this position. In an ideal world we'd be looking at something
much more AS like: ASStudio expanded and kept up-to-date, or FaceSpan 5 and
beyond. But in the real world of AS, the language is pretty stagnant --
sure, it's well maintained and gets regular minor tweaks, but there's no
sign it will ever get any sort of major overhaul. It still lacks even such
basics as the ability to change the case of a letter reliably. To me,
AppleScriptObjC looks like a compromise that offers the biggest bang that
can be delivered (and maintained) on very modest resources. For that reason,
I can overlook a lot of shortcomings (OK, except the lack of any
documentation). As scripters we've always been beggars -- to Apple and to
app developers -- so this accommodation hasn't been particularly wrenching.)
> Conducting any courses Shane?
Logistics are a problem. I did a day on it at the last AppleScript Pro
Sessions, and even John Welch seemed to like it (heck, he used the word
"awesome"). But we've drawn stumps on ASPro, partly because of falling
demand, so I can't see enough demand from a subset of scripters. But if you
want to try to organise something, I'm always for sale...
--
Shane Stanley <email@hidden>
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