On Wed, 23 Oct 2002 16:00:24 -0500, Howdy-Tzi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 23, 2002, at 03:10 PM, Kurt Griffin wrote: > > > Brennan has been after this kind of thing at a more meta level for a > > while - > > the ability to script Director. If we could script Director, you could > > run a > > script on startmovie that would check to see if the activeCastLib > > (already a > > lingo property that can be tested... but not set) is 1, and then close > > the > > sucker. One powerful tool can solve a whole lot of "It only matters to > > one > > guy" problems. > > Yes, that would of course be the most ideal solution. An entire cottage > industry could spring up with various folks offering packages that > could be used to totally customize and optimize the Director > environment to suit anyone's needs. Right, ditching 'Internal' taken alone would not serve the broader community, or add much value to the product, but I certainly believe that making (say) 'publish' or 'export as quicktime' scriptable would sell a few more units (perhaps special 'server' or 'production bundle' licenses could be in order). The more that Director is scriptable, the more versatile and useful a tool it becomes to more people as part of more (and more varied) production processes. Director used to own the market that After Effects now dominates. Clearly, Macromedia has no interest in using it to recapture that market today, but there are various niches that After Effects does not reach - most obviously the lack of a scripting language - and it seems a dreadful waste not to be able to incorporate the immense power of imaging lingo into other kinds of automated production (especially non-real-time generation of content) for the sake of hooking up already-implemented functionality. Director has repeatedly proved itself a master of versatility, and the various twists and turns in its history have often been driven by its unexpected adoption by particular communities. (Who in the mid 1990s would ever have expected it to become the number one 3d webgame development platform?). Making Director fully scriptable, or at least extending its scriptablity, would capitalize on that versatility enormously and, who knows, maybe capture a few markets we didn't know existed. So, in case it is not obvious, the thing is for as many of us as possible to 'wish' for this using the ritual which has become sacred to our brotherhood. (And sisterhood). The incantation for this particular magickal rite is; <mailto:wish-director@;macromedia.com?subject=Scriptable%20Authoring%20Environment&body=Please%20make%20the%20Director%20authoring%20environment%20fully%20scriptable> Brennan [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi To post messages to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L is for learning and helping with programming Lingo. Thanks!]
