home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
The Fatted Calf
/
The Fatted Calf.iso
/
Applications
/
Workspace
/
TickleServices
/
README
< prev
Wrap
Text File
|
1994-04-06
|
5KB
|
87 lines
Copyright 1993,1994 Scott Hess All Rights Reserved
Welcome to Tickle Services
TickleServices is a dynamic NEXTSTEP Services Menu framework. TickleServices
is distributed as shareware (see the License section of the online manual).
Hopefully you will enjoy using TickleServices as much as I have enjoyed
bringing it to you.
Scott Hess
12901 Upton Avenue South, #326
Burnsville, MN 55337
(612) 895-1208 (home)
(612) 890-1332 (office)
scott@gac.edu or shess@ssesco.com
For installation instructions, please consult the Getting Started file.
[To the archive maintainer: TickleServices is shareware, so it probably
belongs with commercial and semi-commercial offerings. TickleServices1.1
runs under NS3.x for Motorola or Intel and replaces TickleServices1.02. It
should not replace TickleServices1.01, because version 1.01 can run under
NeXTSTEP2.1 while version 1.1 cannot.]
Why You Should be Interested in TickleServices
Almost everyone in the NeXT market is familiar with at least one of the wide
variety of service-providing ``applets'' available on the network. These
provide services ranging from reformatting and quoting email messages to
copying the name of the currently selected file to the Pasteboard.
Unfortunately, such applets are too useful. One begins to notice a row of
services-providing applets arrayed across the bottom of the screen, plus a
couple hanging around in the background as daemon processes. Furthermore,
almost all of these applets contain large amounts of duplicated code to
implement the interface to the services facility, which translates directly
into duplicated effort.
This is the situation TickleServices developed from. It was not that there
were complaints about the applets - they all seemed to work consistently
well. It just seemed that there should be a better way to accomplish the
same thing in a more general fashion, without requiring 10 service-providing
programs to do it.
TickleServices provides a framework upon which new services entries may be
built. It uses a string-based scripting language to direct execution, which
allows many text-handling services to be written in one or two lines. Instead
of writing fifteen lines of Objective-C code to support two lines of actual
services work, you just write the two lines and be done with it. The scripting
language is Tcl, for Tool Command Language, and is pronounced ``tickle''.
TickleServices allows for much more rapid prototyping of new services than
Objective-C does. When you modify a TickleServices service, you save it and
the new version is available immediately for testing. You need not wait for
the provider to compile, nor be concerned with replacing the currently running
version with the newly built version. In the time it might take to look up
the documentation needed to write an Objective-C services provider, you will
likely have the service finished in TickleServices. Then you can either get
back to work, spend some quality time with your family/significant other, or
better yet, apply the saved time to adding bells and whistles to your new
service.
For instance, in April of 1993, there was a thread on one of the
comp.sys.next.* newsgroups about different operations that would be useful
in Workspace, such as ``Copy To'' and ``Group In Directory''. This happened
in the midst of the TickleServices beta cycle. A couple minutes after reading
the posts, I had an initial version of the services up and running. That
evening, I received emailed versions from some of my beta testers.
TickleServices makes creation of new services painless enough that it's easier
to implement the service than it is to discuss whether or not the service is
worth implementing.
If anything, TickleServices makes it too easy to build new services. I've
lost many hours in the past couple months writing interesting new services
of dubious utility, just because it wasn't hard to do so. My beta testers
threatened to revolt as their services menus started to push off the bottom
of the screen. Watch yourself lest you spend more time adding tinsel to
services than you spend actually using them!
Another innovation is that TickleServices separates the NEXTSTEP front-end
program from the services-providing daemon. The immediate advantage of this
separation is that once you have TickleServices installed, you need not run
the TickleServices.app front-end unless you wish to modify your services
entries. There need be no undesired icons sullying your Workspace. As an
added bonus, the TickleServices services are available from all programs,
including the front-end.