On 6/22/14, 12:13 PM, Kevin Walzer wrote:
tclAE works by allowing you to register specific Apple Events with the
system and to register an internal Tcl command that implements the Apple
Event functionality. (Externally the command is mapped to an AppleScript
command that is registered elsewhere.) Doing this via Tkx, I have
started with this command:
Tkx::tclAE__installEventHandler ("Perl", "hihi", "perl::hello");
"Perl" and "hihi" are the Apple Event fields (they are arbitrary
four-char fields) and "perl::hello" is the internal subroutine that
responds to the command. That should work, but when I actually run an
AppleScript command targeting my test app, I get this error:
perlapp got an error: invalid command name "perl::hello"
That error string means that it's a non-existent Tcl command.
Here is where I am not sure if I am doing things correctly. I am
exposing the Perl command to the Tcl interpreter by defining it thus as
a Perl subroutine:
sub tcl::hello (theAppleEvent theReturnAE)
and then exporting it thus:
my $tcl = Tcl->new;
$tcl->export_to_tcl(subs_from=>'tcl', vars_from=>'tcl');
This seems to provide the cleanest and simplest mapping between Perl
subroutines and Tcl commands. I am also aware that I can define the
command as this:
$tcl->CreateCommand(hello, \&hello):
Is one method better than the other?
In any event, tclAE is not picking up on the Tcl command I'm passing to
the Tcl interpreter, and I believe it should. Can anyone suggest how I
can get this command exposed cleanly to the Tcl interpreter if I am not
doing it correctly?
After doing more investigation, I believe the command was not being
picked up because the call to Tcl->new produced a new Tcl interpreter.
What I was looking to do was to have the command picked up by the main
Tcl interpreter, running the GUI code.
The solution was so simple and elegant it astounded me:
Tkx::tclAE__installEventHandler ("Perl", "hihi", \&hello);
In other words, pass the reference to the subroutine, just like a
command callback, and the Tkx bridge takes care of mapping it internally
to a Tcl command and then returning the correct output first to the app,
then to the calling AppleScript.
Amazing. I've been beating my head against a wall for a week trying to
get this to work at the C level, without results. This opens up all
kinds of things for my projects--thank you so much for the terrific work!
--Kevin
--
Kevin Walzer
Code by Kevin/Mobile Code by Kevin
http://www.codebykevin.com
http://www.wtmobilesoftware.com
