Michael: So happy to see that we're aligned on most of
these points. During this thread I mentioned that people
might not think AppleScript is sexy. Let me just say
that opinion has no basis in reality other my meandering
ignorance, and I retract it as one of the more idiotic
comments I have made in my lifetime. Thanks for your
understanding on this issue.
As for the rest of it.
Alain Farmer wrote:
> Alain : So the Dweebs are not taking over then ???
Michael: Of course the Dweebs will, it just won't be
these programs as we know them today. They will
either evolve to user-friendliness or like so many
other extraordinary applications, be used as
springboards into a completely exponential advancement
by leaving the product behind and creating a completely
new product based on the old one, but a cleaner
implementation.
> Alain : I'm not switching, that's for sure ! MacOS.
Michael: Documented evidence that there will always be
at least one Mac consumer! ;)
And I know you are not alone.
> ... User-friendliness seems to be taking a back seat
> these days, eh !
User friendliness will clearly take a back seat over
functionality in the programming world at first, but the
ultimate result is that eventually those with taste, style,
and class gets their hands on the product and give it a
face lift ;)
I guess it's kind of like when a guy finally settles down
with a girl, and gets a decent living environment :)
disclaimer: Stereotypes used for example purposes only :)
> > Micheal Fair : ...unless we plan on having an
> > OpenCard engine ...
>
> Alain : We could start with the MetaCard engin.
Michael: Ansolutely! The only parts of the mc engine
that make it difficult for me to use, and it may just be that
I'm an idiot who hasn't read the directions yet, is that there
is no way to write a library of functions to be included in
the script. On top of that, it's regular expression library
isn't as powerful as Python, or Perl.
I may get this example wrong but I believe there is
currently no way to easily match the shorter of two
possible matches in Metacard
ie
put "This is a sentence. This is a sentence too." into tString
put replaceText(tString, "^.*\.", "This is one sentence.")
Will always output:
"This is one sentence."
and never be able to output:
"This is one sentence. This is a sentence too."
People can live without this feature and I have needed
it before, and I have been able to make do without it.
However, it is still something that makes me hesititant.
It's the first issue actually stops me from investing any
serious time trying to use Metacard as a web scripting
tool. Licensing was another, but that's just because I
didn't know that Metacard was completely free for this
kind of use.
Without being to "include" scripts, or some other kind
of library feature, I am stuck with copy and paste, or
limiting myself to what I can type, making it near
impossible to leverage other people's code.
> > Micheal Fair : ... with all capabilities of Perl text
> > processing anytime in the near future, in which case
> > dump Perl.
>
> Alain : There exists an OSAX such that AppleScript can do GREP just
> like PERL.
Michael: How about string manipulation based on regular
expressions, like "replaceText" in MC? And the
ability to chunk strings into different variables based on
regular expressions.
> > Micheal Fair : A language is used to express
> > programs, programs do stuff, if you can express a
> > program in a language you already know, without major
> > performance/maintenance hits, use the one you know.
>
> Alain : How about ... AppleScript ? It is easy, freely available, quite
> similar to HyperTalk, system-wide, object-oriented, open-ended, etc.
> And, in its new incarnation, it is PowerPC native and thus 5 times
> faster than it used to be. Apple has also vastly improved AppleScript's
> CGI handling capabilities.
Michael: I personally don't know AppleScript and have
never written a Mac program in my life (unless it was
a Metacard stack). But if your web server can handle
the load, and AppleScript is convienent to use, and
does the job you need it to do. Do it!
But, not all of us have Macs or MacOS/OS X for
servers. You come out with an x86 implementation
for Linux and an Apache module and I just might use it.
(Although why not just use MetaCard in this case?)
Thanks for the response!
-- Michael --
