Paul Berkowitz wrote:
The type 'alias' for the Save command in the Standard Suite is a long, longstanding bug in AppleScript.
Replacing (as of 10.3) a previous long, longstanding implementation bug where it was specified as a POSIX path string. :p
I take it 'alias' is just a documentation error then, and the application will also accept a file spec/file url type identifying an existing/not-yet-created file.
Fortunately there is an equally longstanding coercion, performs by AppleScript itself, that allows you to use a string or Unicode text there
Presumably there's a POSIX path string-to-file object coercion introduced in 10.3 to maintain compatibility scripts written for Cocoa apps in 10.2, where 'save...in' took a POSIX path string instead of a file object.
In aem's case at least, I'd be extremely reluctant simply to replace all use of Mac file objects with POSIX path strings. I've already tried this once and it just caused problems. I really would like an elegant, easy-to-use solution that respects AE file objects and provides user-friendly Python equivalents that hide as much of the underlying clumsiness without introducing any new problems. Might be a non-trivial task, but I think it'd be worth doing, especially if Python's to become a genuine replacement for AppleScript.
In OS X, the coercion is now to fileURL, I believe. Whether this coercion takes place at a deep enough level (AppleEvent?) that it will work also for appscript and MacPython, I don't know. If you try it, what happens?
I've tried supplying FileURLs to Tex-Edit Plus in 10.2 and it seemed to work ok. If CFURL worked properly I'd probably just sling in the code to coerce AEDescs of typeFSSpec and typeFSRef to typeFileURL and spit out CFURLs, then wait and see if anyone runs into problems. NSURL is an alternative, though I'm still a little uncomfortable about coupling aem to PyObjC just for the sake of one little type; I'll think about this a bit more.
It would definitely be nice if the whole Mac file type muddle could be reduced - at least at the end-user level - to high-level, user-friendly FileURL and Alias classes. The only questions are: can we get there safely, and if so, how?
Cheers,
has -- http://freespace.virgin.net/hamish.sanderson/ _______________________________________________ Pythonmac-SIG maillist - Pythonmac-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pythonmac-sig
