In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thane Norton) wrote:
> Up until now, I have done all of my perl->AppleScript interfacing > using osascript. I am planning on writing an script that does a lot > of Scripting in OmniGraffle, and was wondering if anyone has any > experience with the CPAN AppleScript packages that are available. > Specifically I am looking at Mac::AppleScript or > MacPerl::AppleScript. Thoughts? The two are about the same. The differences are primarily that (I think) Mac::AppleScript is not really supported any longer, because it was written before Mac::Carbon was ported to Mac OS X (and is now included in Mac OS X, as of Tiger), and it's a bit slower. There's also the Mac::OSA::Simple::applescript() function, which calls the OSA functions directly, and is about as fast as MacPerl::DoAppleScript. Of course, osascript is *far* slower than both. Of course, this is not because osascript itself is slow, but because perl has to call out to the shell. Plus, osascript is harder to use than the others, since you have to do all that escaping. The non-osascript methods are all good though; MacPerl::DoAppleScript() is just preferred because it is already included in Tiger and it's the fastest of the four methods. Here's some benchmarking I did a little while ago, and I just reran the Benchmark in Tiger and it's basicaly the same. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.macperl/2938 Also, as noted, there's Mac::Glue, which is usually a bit slower than calling AppleScript functions directly, but can be faster in some cases, too, by being able to do looping and other things Perl does better, in Perl. Mac::Glue calls the Apple event API directly. But, of course, its main feature is that you can write Perl instead of AppleScript. Finally, the Mac::OSA::Simple method allows you to compile scripts and execute them, thereby giving you the best possible performance. (You can also compile a script that can accept variables, for those cases where you need to call the same script many times but with different values passed to it, by setting up handlers.) So those are the main issues, to my mind: ease/style of use, availability, and performance. Here's an update on the benchmarks, which test only raw performance of getting the value of a property. #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use Benchmark qw(timethese cmpthese); use Mac::AppleScript 'RunAppleScript'; use MacPerl 'DoAppleScript'; use Mac::OSA::Simple qw(applescript compile_applescript); use Mac::Glue; my $finder = new Mac::Glue 'Finder'; # cache name property object so we don't need to recreate it every time my $prop = $finder->prop(name => of => 'startup disk'); my $script = 'tell application "Finder" to get name of startup disk'; my $compiled = compile_applescript($script); my %tests = ( applescpt => sub { applescript($script) }, applescptc => sub { $compiled->execute }, doscript => sub { DoAppleScript($script) }, runscript => sub { RunAppleScript($script) }, glue => sub { $finder->prop(name => of => 'startup disk')->get }, gluec => sub { $prop->get }, osascript => sub { `osascript -ss -e '$script'` } ); my $results = timethese(500, \%tests); cmpthese($results); Benchmark: timing 500 iterations of applescpt, applescptc, doscript, glue, gluec, osascript, runscript... applescpt: 3 wallclock secs ( 1.40 usr + 0.38 sys = 1.78 CPU) @ 280.90/s (n=500) applescptc: 1 wallclock secs ( 0.40 usr + 0.04 sys = 0.44 CPU) @ 1136.36/s (n=500) doscript: 3 wallclock secs ( 1.01 usr + 0.36 sys = 1.37 CPU) @ 364.96/s (n=500) glue: 7 wallclock secs ( 2.89 usr + 1.12 sys = 4.01 CPU) @ 124.69/s (n=500) gluec: 7 wallclock secs ( 2.39 usr + 1.09 sys = 3.48 CPU) @ 143.68/s (n=500) osascript: 281 wallclock secs ( 0.13 usr 3.31 sys + 96.68 cusr 53.40 csys = 153.52 CPU) @ 145.35/s (n=500) runscript: 27 wallclock secs ( 8.15 usr + 6.58 sys = 14.73 CPU) @ 33.94/s (n=500) Rate runscript glue gluec osascript applescpt doscript applescptc runscript 33.9/s -- -73% -76% -77% -88% -91% -97% glue 125/s 267% -- -13% -14% -56% -66% -89% gluec 144/s 323% 15% -- -1% -49% -61% -87% osascript 145/s 328% 17% 1% -- -48% -60% -87% applescpt 281/s 728% 125% 96% 93% -- -23% -75% doscript 365/s 975% 193% 154% 151% 30% -- -68% applescptc 1136/s 3248% 811% 691% 682% 305% 211% -- (Note: much of Mac::Carbon, and Mac::Glue, does not work yet on Intel; my port should be done in a week.) Hope that helps, -- Chris Nandor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://pudge.net/ Open Source Technology Group [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://ostg.com/
