OSX will run shell scripts just fine; all the usual unix utilities are there, and what it doesn't have you can get from MacPorts. If you're saying that many OSX applications don't have much command-line awareness, that's probably true.
I use a variety of sh scripts to do this and that. Works great. Don't know about cli access to the GUI apps. Except for lilypond, I've been using it to engrave some music for church, and its GUI interface is clumsy and annoying. (The output is magnificent, and it's free.) But I just made a Makefile and call the underlying CLI app and now it does it all for me, no missing steps. Love it. Edit in emacs, and punch up make to see the PDF's in a few seconds. No need for WYSIWYG, I prefer non- anyway.
Applescript mystifies me. I've never really had a serious go at it, but the from the glimpses I've had it's just really different from other scripting I've done. It did not look intuitive at all.
It was odd, but I used it successfully the other day. Due to an unfortunate set of circumstances I had to duplicate a dual-boot CD, but couldn't seem to do it with the native OSX tools. I had Toast on the old Mac, and it'll do a SCSI-to-SCSI raw copy, except that the old Mac OS doesn't (by default) offer you the ability to tolerate an UN-mounted filesystem. I had a newer (8.0) OS that could mount the source volume, but for whatever reason my version of Toast would come up on it with a dead menu system. Couldn't use any pulldown menus, and you needed one to switch to SCSI-to-SCSI copy mode. Found an applescript for controlling Toast, and ran _it_ to switch modes. Thereafter I duped the disk just fine. I think most of the old Mac OS apps were apple-scriptable, but that may have fallen out somewhat in OSX world. -- Jim _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com For new and used parts go to www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
