On 2/27/01 8:06 PM, "Joseph Linaschke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> However one shouldn't have to use third party scripts to get around an
> issue. The software should just work, as it is.
Let's get one thing straight here. An application isn't accessible to
so-called "third party scripts" (actually I think of myself as the second
party here) by accident. It has to be made scriptable by the developers. And
that can be done badly, or it can be done well. With Entourage, it's been
done very well indeed. The only reason that Allen, I and others can write
useful scripts is because the application has been designed that way, so
that not only almost everything that you can do in the main interface can be
automated, but even things that can't be done at all by a user can be
scripted. As I say, that doesn't happen by accident.
And why have they done this? I would think because it gives the opportunity
to customize the application to the nth degree in a way that doesn't require
the notorious "bloatware" of which Microsoft was always being accused of
creating. I actually agree that there are a number of things that could be
in the app itself, and which I'm sure will be by version 2 or 3. I imagine
that when you work for Microsoft, you don't have the luxury of taking 5
years to get it "just right" before releasing v1.0. They have to get it out
there. For example, I think they could and should have provided better mail
merge features to Word, and, in the meantime, that was one of the big
efforts both I and George Clark undertook to temporarily fill that gap with
scripts.
Adding all the PIM features to Outlook Express was a huge job, which no one
is pretending is perfect. None of the regular scripters here seem to use the
Palm features much, which is possibly why some things haven't been done by
script yet. I'm sure that many of them will eventually be taken care of in
the application itself, in the next major release. if you really can't
function until then - even if someone provides some scripts in the meantime
- then go back to using what you were using before. There was a LOT of
information available as to exactly what did and what didn't work between
Entourage and Palm when it was released, and if you went and bought Office
2001 without researching that properly when it seems to matter so much to
you, you really have only yourself to blame.
--
Paul Berkowitz
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