Re: Mac Automation Scripting Guide [was Re: New Calendar Scripting Guide from Apple]
Re: Mac Automation Scripting Guide [was Re: New Calendar Scripting Guide from Apple]
- Subject: Re: Mac Automation Scripting Guide [was Re: New Calendar Scripting Guide from Apple]
- From: has <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2016 14:17:49 +0000
Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
>> 2016/03/22 21:33、has <email@hidden> のメール：
>>
>> and already pounded Apress's chaotic tome into a mostly excellent
coverage of the subject, so know a thing or two about putting together
documentation that doesn't totally suck.
>
> You mind giving the reference again ? :)
http://www.apress.com/9781430223610
Full disclosure, yeah it has its flaws: it takes WAY too damn long to
get moving (yay me!:p), the intro to application scripting chapter
should've been split into two and loaded with hands-on walkthrough
examples, the excellent guest chapter on Office scripting was rendered
mostly obsolete the day it was published by MS's rude decision to
replace Entourage with Outlook, there are a couple of corking errors in
code (for which Apress has annoyingly lost the errata) and a few other
bits and pieces, which are entirely mea culpa. In the book's defense, it
was meant to be a 9-month side job that ran to 18(!) and completely
burned out everyone involved, so we simply ran out of time in which to
go back and address these issues. In the end it was go to press, or not
at all. We did the former, of course; and even with its shortcomings I
think it's a highly valuable contribution to the AppleScript world and
all its contributors should be rightly proud.
I'd have loved to have done a 4th edition too just to 100% nail it, but
I already asked Apress about this a couple years ago and there's more
chance of flying pigs ice-skating in hell as there's bugger all demand
left for AppleScript now. On the downside, as an entry into end-user
programming for non-programmers, it's ultimately hamstrung by the
insanely bloated, incoherent mess that is the AppleScript language
itself. It took almost 500(!) pages of heavy text to explain that
supposedly "end-user" language; a real end-user language like Logo can
be fully covered in a couple dozen. There's a reason I'm so into
Lispy/Logo-ish languages nowadays and so scornful of Algol/C-descended
languages like AppleScript and Swift: if you can't explain the language
clearly and concisely[1], then it's the *language* you need to rewrite,
not the book.
While some of AppleScript's problems could at least be ameliorated, if
not eliminated, the AS team demonstrates little insight into its
failings, never mind a willingness to address them. TBH, I think it's
time Apple stopped throwing good money after bad and (assuming they
actually give a toss for user empowerment and freedom!) establish a
brand new team to tackle the dual challenges of end-user programming and
personal automation completely afresh. The personal computing world
today is radically different to the one that birthed AppleScript, and
there are whole audiences and technologies today that simply didn't
exist back then: just look at mobile users and voice control, for example.
Think what a really simple, parsimonious, homoiconic Logo-esque language
that makes it child's play for users to build up their own vocabularies
with the words and phrases that *they* want, combined with modern
writing tools with the accessibility and convenience of texting, could
do. It would enable a modern cross-platform user-friendly replacement to
Automator and AppleScript to be easily established, opening up
automation to vast new audiences, while still providing all the power
and depth that serious and professional progeammers expect. And you need
to win over the latter as much as the former (something that AS and the
AS team have totally failed at), as it's the latter who create the
scriptable apps and other infrastructure that make it so useful to everyone.
Anyway I digress, and I have more pressing work to do. But do ask
sometime about the work I'm doing on my next scripting language, a
Logo-AppleScript hybrid that (if I ever get bloody Swift to work right)
that allows users to write human-readable - and *speakable* - commands
using whitespace and natural English-like punctuation, without any of
the nasty brittle hackery, mind-meltingly complex semantics and general
"keep hitting it blindly until it [apparently] works" strategy that
learning and using AppleScript requires. It's very much an experiment
for now and it may well not pan out, but I'm just a dumb old art school
dropout who's never had a CS class in its life, and I'm seriously
thinking (and working) on how to make end-user scripting and automation
radically better and far more accessible to a far larger audience than
poor old AppleScript ever will be. So if even I can do it, what's
Apple's excuse?
Regards,
has
[1] Application automation has its issues too, of course, but at least
the basic principles there are sound (albeit unconventional), so a full,
detailed, accurate explanation of how it all works should be within
reach. (I deliberately fudged it in the book as a compromise between
what users need to know to start scripting apps, and what could be
explained short of contradicting established folklore and
[mis]conceptions, which would have only ended up creating more confusion
than it solved. Small steps...)
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