Re: Scripting Bridge: the Excel case

FROM : has
DATE : Mon Jan 14 20:29:34 2008

J.P.Pellet wrote:

> I'm trying to send AppleEvent to Excel using Scripting Bridge. I
> generated the Excel.h header like this:
> [...]
> Unfortunately, I get compile-time warnings and a lot of syntax errors
> with the big (unmodified) header file:
>
>  warning: multi-character character constant
>  error: syntax error at 'OTHER' token
>  -->  ExcelE151SheetTypeExcel4IntlMacroSheet = '\0\0\002'',
> [...]
> I am surprised to see characters such as ' and [ in the escape
> sequences generated by sdp. Am I missing something here?


Forgetting to escape the single-quote character is a bug in sdp; file 
a report. In the meantime, you'll have to fix any dodgy OSTypes in the 
header file by hand.


>  Is Excel simply not ScriptingBridge-savvy?



While not directly related to the above bug, which is entirely sdp's 
fault, a general criticism I'd make of Scripting Bridge is that it 
isn't terribly AppleScript-savvy. Application developers have spent 
the last fifteen years designing and testing their scripting 
interfaces against the AppleScript language, which has its own 
particular way of doing things, based on the not unreasonable 
assumption that if something works with AppleScript then it's okay. 
Now Scripting Bridge comes along with its own ideas and assumptions 
about how application scripting should work, which may or may not bear 
any resemblance to the way scriptable applications actually behave in 
the real world.

There's a smug aphorism in there somewhere about those who fail to 
learn from history, etc, but the main point is that you can expect 
Scripting Bridge to not work as well as AppleScript with some 
applications, and possibly fail completely with some others. Carbon 
applications are more likely to be affected by this than Cocoa ones 
(since some of SB's inbuilt assumptions are based on Cocoa Scripting 
behaviours), although the latter aren't exempt either. Application 
scripting can be a messy, frustrating and chronically under-documented 
business, but it is what it is and if you want to get things done it's 
something that you and the various Apple event bridges just have to 
deal with.

Anyway, if you want to try an alternative to Scripting Bridge, objc-
appscript is coming along nicely:

   http://appscript.sourceforge.net/objc-appscript.html

e.g. To make an Excel glue:

   osaglue -o EXGlue -p EX Microsoft\ Excel

(I'd offer some sample code too, only I don't have a copy of Office 
2004 to play with, unfortunately.)

It's still officially alphaware so the usual caveats apply (and if you 
do have any problems, report them and I'll sort it out asap), but the 
core functionality is done and I'm mostly just testing and polishing. 
It's based on the very mature, proven Python appscript bridge which is 
designed to mimic the way that AppleScript does things in order to 
provide the same level of compatibility with even the most quirky, 
buggy or downright bizarre scriptable applications.

HTH, and if you've any queries about appscript just drop us a mail.

has
--
http://appscript.sourceforge.net
http://rb-appscript.rubyforge.org