Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!gatech!udel!princeton!phoenix!bskendig
From: bskendig@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Brian Kendig)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: User scripting in 7.x?
Message-ID: <7160@idunno.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 14 Mar 91 14:04:38 GMT
References: <27DF36E7.19478@orion.oac.uci.edu>
Sender: news@idunno.Princeton.EDU
Organization: Starfleet Academy: Princeton University
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In article <27DF36E7.19478@orion.oac.uci.edu> bdugan@teri.bio.uci.edu (Bill Dugan) writes:
>According to the first press releases for System 7.0, Apple would release
>something called "user scripting" which to me sounded like the closest thing
>to a CLI available for the Macintosh ...
>
>Questions:  (1) What details do we have on the user scripting?  Will we
>be able to, say, specify a bunch of files (using wildcards, of course) as
>inputs to a certain program, and then rout the output of that program to
>a second program, and rout the output of both programs to a third?  Or
>is it going to be more like another keyboard macro program?

I suspect it'll be more along the lines of "when a file is put into
this folder, do such-and-such" or "at precisely this time, execute
this list of actions", where the actions include opening applications
and sending AppleEvents to them, sending files to the printer, and so
forth.

I really don't think it'll be anything that looks like a CLI.  Apple
is decidedly anti-CLI, for better or worse (probably for the better,
because if they provide a CLI, then people will come to use it, and
then come to depend on it, and this would mean there's something wrong
with their desktop interface.  Actually, I can't think of any
_revolutionary_ benefits a CLI would bring to the Mac except piping
and redirection, but then again how do you pipe anything to and from a
word processor?)  Besides, wildcards aren't necessarily intuitive...

>(2) Any idea on when it will arrive?  (Yeah, right, like Apple would tell us
>that anyway.  :(    Oh well.)

DIfferent reports have speculated that it'd be released either with
`System 7.1' or `System 8.0'.  AppleScript has been shelved until
everything else has settled down enough to devote some time to it, as
has been the new print architecture and other tasks on the to-do list
such as a rewrite of MacinTalk (no, the 2.0 floating around isn't
real).

     << Brian >>

| Brian S. Kendig      \ Macintosh |   Engineering,   | bskendig             |
| Computer Engineering |\ Thought  |  USS Enterprise  | @phoenix.Princeton.EDU
| Princeton University |_\ Police  | -= NCC-1701-D =- | @PUCC.BITNET         |
"It's not that I don't HAVE the work to *do* -- I don't DO the work I *have*."