But if I have to have a double clickable perl script I prefer using the '.command' technique because I really believe Apple should just go ahead and use Perl as the scripting language and put AppleScript to bed along with OS9
Well, that's flat-out ridiculous.
Perl is HARD compared to Applescript.
Here's an Applescript tutorial:
Open the Script Editor Type display dialog "Hello, world." Run the script
and here's a Perl tutorial:
Open the Terminal
Learn how to use ls and cd
Learn how to use vi, emacs or pico or use a GUI text editor and make sure you know all about line endings
Type
#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Hello, world.";
Save the file and exit the editor
Learn how to use chmod
Learn about permissions
Give your file the correct permissions
Learn what a PATH is and where to change it
Make sure the file is in your PATH
Run the script
Now that you've mastered Perl and Applescript, it should be trivial to use either language to create a script that extracts information from a FileMaker database and places it into a QuarkXPress template, then imports images into the document from a remote server, applies the appropriate style sheets to the text, prints the document on a color printer, exports the document as a PDF, saves the text as an HTML file, then opens the HTML file in BBEdit.
If you find this difficult to accomplish in Perl, feel free to convert the FileMaker database to MySQL and retrain all of your designers to use LaTeX instead of QuarkXPress. Don't forget to rewrite the 100+ workflow automation Applescripts you've already created in Perl.
While you're working on that, I'll contact Apple and urge them to get rid of PHP, Python, Ruby, C++ and Java.
Perl for OS X: There's Only One Way To Do It!
