Re: coercing results of UI elements to paragraph delimited list
Re: coercing results of UI elements to paragraph delimited list
- Subject: Re: coercing results of UI elements to paragraph delimited list
- From: Shane Stanley <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 14 Jul 2013 17:38:32 +1000
On 14/07/2013, at 2:04 PM, 2551 <email@hidden> wrote:
> I don’t understand the aggressive tone of your entire post
It wasn't meant to be aggressive.
Let me try again:
You said: "SD is too frightening for newbies to even look at for free".
I think that's wrong -- and yes, that's an opinion. But it's also one based on having taught AppleScript for many years.
I think you're underestimating people's abilities.
But I think you're also, perhaps unintentionally, misrepresenting SD. Yes, it has features for advanced users, but it also has several features, like the enhanced dictionary display, and especially the dictionary Explorer, that are incredibly useful for newcomers. Even if they don't buy it, they can learn an awful lot from it in 20 days.
> But before you can convince someone to spend large amounts of money on something, you need to get them hooked into it first. They need to know what ‘variables’ are and what ‘debugging’ means and why the things that SD offers are worth paying for. My audience are people that have likely never opened the AS Editor before or have any idea what ‘scripting’ means.
But what you asked about was a way to format results. At that point, the user does know what scripting is about. They're already hitting the shortcomings of ASE. Seems like a perfect point to tell them that something better is available, so that second-rate tools don't turn them off the whole idea. You may be trying not to frighten them, but keeping them in the dark can just as easily turn them off.
> when you’re talking about a tool that costs more than, say Microsoft Office, people who’ve never done any scripting before are not going to welcome someone (i.e., me) saying ‘Hey, before you start, you need to buy this...’.
You don't have to convince anyone to buy anything. But I think you're doing newcomers a disservice by not telling them that something better is available in the belief that it will frighten them.
Anyway, my main point is this: SD might be indispensible to serious scripters, but you shouldn't overlook the fact that it has several features that are also invaluable to newcomers.
--
Shane Stanley <email@hidden>
'AppleScriptObjC Explored' <www.macosxautomation.com/applescript/apps/>
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