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- From: shebs@apple.com (Stan Shebs)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
- Subject: Re: Word 5.1 & AppleEvents
- Message-ID: <shebs-171192100253@delos.apple.com>
- Date: 17 Nov 92 18:19:20 GMT
- Article-I.D.: delos.shebs-171192100253
- References: <1992Nov11.232622.30978@fourd.com> <7875@lib.tmc.edu>
- Sender: news@gallant.apple.com
- Followup-To: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
- Organization: Apple Computer Inc.
- Lines: 35
-
- In article <7875@lib.tmc.edu>, draper@odin.mda.uth.tmc.edu (E.J. Draper)
- wrote:
-
- > I think this is a larger problem for Apple than they think it is. If
- > Apple wants the developer community to adopt object model AppleEvents,
- > and this will be essential if AppleScript is going to succeed, it will
- > have to do the following:
- >
- > 1) Document the object model in *far* less esoteric terms.
- > 2) Embark upon an educational crusade.
- > (Not just horrendously priced DU classes)
- > 3) Simplify the implementation.
-
- AppleEvents are like the bare X protocol. You can write efficient code
- to drive a display on the other side of a network, but it would be very
- difficult. To use the X protocol, you have Lisp and C libraries to do
- the most useful things in a function call style, and then you get a
- toolkit to encapsulate groups of calls into interface objects, and then
- you can use a scripting language like Tcl/Tk to build useful things.
-
- Personally, I think the basic API and object model is fine, but it's
- very low-level and should be much less visible to normal application
- developers. AppleScript will help a lot with understanding the
- high-level view of things - it can show you an English description of
- an event, for instance. We could use more toolkit-type AE support,
- but I don't know what that should look like.
-
- If it's any consolation, nobody else has this figured all this out
- either. Competitors are systems like OLE and ORB, but they're also
- hard to use and not well-accepted yet. Even the research world
- hasn't agreed on a scheme to link objects in multiple programs.
-
- Stan Shebs
- Apple ATG System Software (but speaking for myself, of course)
- shebs@apple.com
-