Re: Problems with ScriptingBridge and iTunes

FROM : has
DATE : Mon Mar 03 01:44:31 2008

Adam P Jenkins wrote:

> I'm not sure what the logic is behind the "get" method, but there it 
> is.



It's completely logical if you appreciate that Apple event IPC is RPC
+queries. To tell a scriptable application to perform an operation, 
you send it a command (Apple event). If the command operates on 
application objects, you identify those objects using simple first-
class relational queries ("object specifiers" in Apple event jargon, 
or what AppleScripters misleadingly call "references") which you 
supply as arguments (parameters) to the command. As a rough analogy, 
think of using XPath queries over XML-RPC.

It's a simple, really rather elegant, and surprisingly powerful and 
flexible conceptual model, whose simplicity, elegance, power and 
flexibility is, in execution, horribly distorted and obscured by 
AppleScript's - and, to an even greater extent, Scripting Bridge's - 
crazy mad love affair with pseudo-OO syntax and poorly documented 
'magic' behaviours, until the number of folks who have a completely 
accurate and comprehensive understanding of how this stuff really 
works can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.


There's a brief summary of the basic principles behind Apple event IPC 
included in the appscript documentation. For your convenience, the 
Ruby version is currently online at:

   http://rb-appscript.rubyforge.org/doc/appscript-manual/02_aboutappscripting.html

For a more detailed discussion see the two PDF papers by William Cook 
(one of the original AppleScript designers) on the appscript links page:

   http://appscript.sourceforge.net/links.html

Matt Neuburg's "AppleScript: The Definitive Guide" (2nd ed.) is also 
well worth a read.

HTH

has
--
http://appscript.sourceforge.net