[OS X TeX] Applescript-tcl dictionary, wishlist

[Jon Guyer]

On Jan 7, 2005, at 4:02 AM, Will Robertson wrote:

> On 7 Jan 2005, at 5:47 PM, Jérôme Laurens wrote:
>
>> As this list of suggestions is not TeX nor tcl specific, let me feel 
>> free to make a suggestion.
>>
>> AppleScript implementation and user interface being separated,
>> I would suggest not to reinvent the wheel and adopt BBEdit scripting 
>> interface.
>
> Yes, I would like to second Jérôme's suggestion vehemently.

Not to worry (at least in Alpha's respect). The AS interfaces I have 
written have striven to be fully AppleEvent Object Model-compliant. 
BBEdit's dictionary looks the way it does because, between 6.x and 7.x, 
they completely rewrote everything the AEOM way. Since both apps are 
text editors, their terminology and syntax will by necessity be 
asymptotically similar. Any discrepancies I blame on Rich.

The fact is that it was not necessary to add anything to Alpha's 
AppleScript dictionary per se in order to support 'get lines 5 through 
line 9 of document named "gentle.tex"' or 'get file of front window'. 
All that was required was to internally add a core/getd AppleEvent 
handler and a variety of AppleEvent object resolvers. "get", "line", 
"file", "named", and so on are all built into AppleScript or its 
fundamental OSAXen. It may be a nice thing to explicitly add the 
Englishish terms to the dictionary, just so a scripter knows that a 
particular app in fact understands "lines of window" and "selection" 
and "file of document", but AppleScript provides them automatically.

> It's the most annoying thing in the world having to write 
> application-dependent scripts for tasks that are inherently not!

Having spent an inordinate amount of time getting Alpha to talk /to/ 
other apps, trust me when I say that I completely understand.

--------------------- Info ---------------------
Mac-TeX Website: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
           & FAQ: http://latex.yauh.de/faq/
TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
List Post: <mailto:MacOSX-TeX at email.esm.psu.edu>