On Jan 24, 2005, at 20:04, has wrote:
Paul Berkowitz wrote:
It's probably on a par with AppleScript Studio [...] And most applescripters won't even go near Studio because it's "too difficult".
Y'know what this says to me? "Opportunity."
Indeed, Studio IS "too difficult" for many novice scripters: that's because it's a quick-n-dirty low-budget lash-up between Cocoa, Xcode and AppleScript, and miles away from a proper end-user oriented environment such as Hypercard. Yet people use it anyway because while it's fairly sucky at ease-of-use, it's still less sucky than anything else available at the same price point (free). Meanwhile, Studio alternatives such as Revolution and RB prove that significanlty lower suckiness _is_ achievable: RunRev & RB users ain't paying that premium price for nothing.
So all you gotta do to beat Studio is provide something that's a decent bit less sucky than it is (which may or may not be easy, but it's certainly not impossible) while still holding the same price point (something OSS is reknowned for). Whether or not it's an opportunity worth taking - e.g. could the rewards justify the investment? - is another question. But on the technical side at least it seems likely that Apple's left a noticeable window of opportunity for anyone brave and/or foolish to try claiming it.
Well, from the documentation, it looks like you need to use Interface Builder in order to write actions... so if Studio is too difficult, just about anything would be. I suppose a few useful templates including cookie cutter UIs could be included, maybe with some kind of declarative way to add widgets (Renaissance?), would be useful to that kind of users you're talking about. You'd really need to develop a bunch of Actions before you'd know...
The idea here is to develop Automator actions so that _end users_ can automate with complete ease and simplicity, not to make the writing of actions simple.
False dichotomy. While I absolutely agree with the first, I see absolutely no reason why writing actions should not also be made as simple as possible. Otherwise you might as well argue that there's no point in creating languages like Python because you can already program anything in C.
Well, in order to have a language like Python, you need people who can already program anything in C. Actions follow similarly, especially out of the box. They're always going to be easier to use than write, though.
I would agree with Bob that you'd do better to concentrate
on doing things right. The applescript code is simpler than ObjC for anyone
who's done AppleScript, but not for those who haven't.
Well, Action entry and exit points are pretty easy to nail: the AppleScript Action API already does that. Obviously, any folks with Tiger seeds can't discuss NDA'd details with those who don't, so for now a public analysis of the existing UI interaction model and brainstorming of possible better alternatives isn't yet an option. So this thread's really just to get the creative juices woken up; prehaps someone with a seed copy'll decide to pursue it a bit further in private just now, or we can take it to the next stage on-list as Apple releases more technical info into public.
I'm not even sure that NDA'd people are supposed to talk about Tiger amongst themselves. The first rule of ADC is - you do NOT talk about ADC.... :)
-bob
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