Re: AppleScript and MCL

[bonura@taurus.apple.com (Tom Bonura)]

At 1:21 PM 7/7/94, Steven Ritter <sr0o+@andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:

>..........Ideally,
>you'd like something that runs AppleScripts, so you could run something
>like:
>
>(do_script "Tell application \"FileMaker Pro\" get the salary of the
>table with type "employee" and id 999 in the database named
>\"Personnel\" end tell")
...

>I understand that the system provides support for doing this, but I
>don't know the details or if anyone has done it from MCL.


I've built some support for sending applescripts to any scriptable
application.  It's available via anonymous ftp from cambridge.apple.com.

You are quite correct that using AppleEvents directly is actually much more
effecient though it does require more programming.  Additionally, there are
far more applications that support AppleEvents than support AppleScript.

The problem with using AppleEvents in lieu of AppleScript is that the
specification for the AppleEvent call is not usually evident (unless the
AppleEvent interface is published by the author of the software.  For
example one needs to know the event class and event id as well as what
parameters need to be passed).  When an application is scriptable one can
examine the terminology in the application's aete resource and immediately
know what one can say and (pretty much) how to say it.



__________________________
Thomas Bonura
Apple Computer, Inc.
Interactive Media Lab
Intelligent Systems Group
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