scripting languages and Mac OS X

I know that Applescript is the "standard" scripting language of Mac OS
X. I haven't actually used Applescript -- frankly, it seems a bit hard
for me to get my head around. Maybe it's just the very strange-looking
syntax, I dunno. . . Anyhow, I noticed Mac OS X now comes with a
handful of other language interpreters already installed: perl,
python, ruby, and who knows what else.

I remember reading somewhere long ago that an Applescript port was an
openly documented feature, so that any language could theoretically
send Applescript messages to applications and thus take the place of
Applescript. Has anybody done this? Could I, for example, use Ruby to
write scripts for my Objective-C application?

Also. . . Is Applescript really as lame as it looks? Apple seem
pretty proud of Applescript Studio, but I had a hard time imagining
myself developing real apps in that language.

--
Tony Belding, Hamilton Texas

"Tony Belding" <zobeid RemoveThis @techie.com> wrote in message
news:2004063008572316807%zobeid@techiecom...
 > I know that Applescript is the "standard" scripting language of Mac OS
 > X. I haven't actually used Applescript -- frankly, it seems a bit hard
 > for me to get my head around. Maybe it's just the very strange-looking
 > syntax, I dunno. . . Anyhow, I noticed Mac OS X now comes with a
 > handful of other language interpreters already installed: perl,
 > python, ruby, and who knows what else.
 >
 > I remember reading somewhere long ago that an Applescript port was an
 > openly documented feature, so that any language could theoretically
 > send Applescript messages to applications and thus take the place of
 > Applescript. Has anybody done this? Could I, for example, use Ruby to
 > write scripts for my Objective-C application?
 >
 > Also. . . Is Applescript really as lame as it looks? Apple seem
 > pretty proud of Applescript Studio, but I had a hard time imagining
 > myself developing real apps in that language.
 >
 > --
 > Tony Belding, Hamilton Texas
 >

There is a free 3rd party scripting system for Cocoa apps called FScript
(google) that I can't tell you much about but that seems to be going
somewhere.

There was (I think still is) a "plugin" for Applescript that spoke
Javascript instead - check latenightsw.com.
The downside is that it's really just a translator, so you're relying on on
individual apps to support scripting fully and correctly. IIRC , the
company was started by one of the original AS guys from Apple, which
explains how they got the information to develop it: scripting system
internals are very, very poorly documented - lists of functions w/ no
descriptions, no discussion of how any of it works. If there was a Ruby /
Applescript connection like you mention, I'd be very cautious until I saw it
working well.

As far as Applescript Studio - I'm a C++ guy, but I'd go with RealBasic in
99.9% of the cases I can think of. It has good support for using
applescripts where they're needed.



Applescript as a language isn't too bad. Its biggest problem (aside from
verbosity) is that support for it is so limited. Few apps do scripting
beyond the very basics, and no two work the same way. The OS9 Finder was
notorious for providing multiple apparently valid ways to do something, but
only one or two worked as opposed to doing nothing at all or returning
cryptic errors. The OSX Finder is the same + it isn't recordable (last I
checked), so non-trivial scripting is REALLY non-trivial.

Part of the reason is that it is horrendously difficult to make an
application scriptable, much less recordable. Scriptability never really
works works right unless it's designed in from the very beginning, and most
developers tend to skip it in their first version. Powerplant has a good
builtin infrastructure, but it takes a while to learn to use it and it
doesn't retrofit easily.

Realistically, Applescript is most useful when you use it for just a few
applications and use it a lot (it does really well w/ Quark, for example,
because Quark spent years getting it right and users spent years getting the
nuances down.) Shell/Perl scripts work much faster, easier, and better for
most file system stuff than scripting the Finder.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->