Re: AS Library Question
Re: AS Library Question
- Subject: Re: AS Library Question
- From: Jean-Christophe Helary <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2015 12:22:49 +0900
Good morning Shane, thank you for the reply.
> On Dec 21, 2015, at 08:34, Shane Stanley <email@hidden> wrote:
>
> On 20 Dec 2015, at 11:24 PM, Jean-Christophe Helary <email@hidden> wrote:
>>
>> If veteran AS coders were to write a rock solid standard library for Applescript, open sourced etc. I am pretty sure that word of mouth would spread the news like wild fire and that *everybody* would use it *and* promote it.
>
> Sadly, history suggests you're completely wrong.
Do you mean that there were attempts are providing an open source standard library for Applescript and that it did not get used ?
> I mean, I'd be happy to open-source BridgePlus if I thought it would make any difference, and although it's no StandardLib, it contains lots of useful stuff -- much of it the result of direct requests and feedback. But a lot of people won't even consider using it because it's not stamped Made by Apple. It goes beyond a preference: for many people the issue is simply not negotiable.
There are 2 kinds of people who would use such a library:
1) amateur scripters whose needs are not solved by copy-pasting+tweaking what they find on the web and who are frustrated by various shortcomings of the language, which may well come from their lack of knowledge, but seeing the answers to my various questions here, I'm starting to feel like there are real shortcomings and if at *my* level I keep tripping on them, then anything that's community supported and that fixes the issues would be a boon for me. And that's why I'm using snippets of code from this list all the time (and indeed some of my problems do come from a lack of experience).
2) professional scripters who have had to hack around said shortcomings and who would consider use of such a library *if* it were community supported *and* licensed in a way that allows them to use it in their work (and even the LGPL does).
> It's ironic. So much AppleScript-related stuff that does come from Apple -- Exhibit A, Finder scripting -- is hopeless and decaying, to put it politely. But it has that magic Apple stamp. So users will stumble around trying to get sense from things like entire contents or try to bend shell commands that don't know about packages -- anything to avoid using something simple like filesIn:recursive:asPaths: from a third party because it's not anointed. We now have libraries, and the Resources folder of applets and bundles is directly exposed in Script Editor, making deployment logistics painless -- but still the aversion persists.
I don't think it is an aversion. It is more a "I want stuff to work out of the box" attitude by Apple customers who get bored after trying a few things and they don't work, and amateur scripters who have not enough knowledge of Applescript to make a decision regarding what library they should use. But that's the case for amateur python/perl/ruby etc scripters too. Except that their languages work more "out of the box" than Applescript.
> I suspect this is one of the things that separates scripters from regular programmers.
See my comment above. I don't think so at all. I can do things in bash and perl (never tried python or ruby) in a few hours that would literally take me *days* in Applescript. But I have to use Applescript because I'm scripting my Mac apps and processes.
I think there is a vicious circle at work here:
Applescript becomes a pain real fast when you try to go beyond copy-pasting+tweaks (which is not the case for other scripting languages)
→ no wide adoption by amateur scripters
→ no wide interest for third party libraries
→ professional scripters end up hacking their own solutions privately
And also lack of organised community documentation. I asked about a wiki a while ago and there was no positive answer, but I eventually found a wikibook on Applescript yesterday when looking for ways to apply bold to a Word string (and *that* was a convoluted way to put bold on a string). But the book is almost empty. As far as I'm concerned, that would definitely be the place to start a community wide documentation effort.
Jean-Christophe
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