From: has.temp3@...
Date: 2006-10-12T09:20:11+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby appscript 0.1.1 released


Ryan Davis wrote:
> Could you explain what the differences are with ruby aeosa?

Appscript is a much, much higher-level bridge for creating and sending
Apple events. Constructing complex commands and references in aeosa
requires a detailed understanding of the low-level Apple Event Manager
API and lots and lots of grungy code.

For example, just getting the text of the front TextEdit document in
aeosa involves writing:

require 'osx/aeosa'

app = OSX::AEDesc.application("TextEdit")
app.ae_send_mode = 3

query = OSX::AEDesc.record({
	'want' => OSX::AEDesc.new('type', 'prop'),
	'form' => OSX::AEDesc.new('enum', 'prop'),
	'seld' => OSX::AEDesc.new('type', 'ctxt'),
	'from' => OSX::AEDesc.record({
			'want' => OSX::AEDesc.new('type', 'docu'),
			'form' => OSX::AEDesc.new('enum', 'indx'),
			'seld' => 1,
			'from' => OSX::AEDesc.null})}).coerce('obj ')

p app.ae_send('core', 'getd', query).coerce('reco').
to_rbobj['----'].to_rbobj

Pretty hairy stuff (and even after a half-hour's troubleshooting I
still couldn't get it to work correctly for some reason).

With appscript, you just write:

require "appscript"

p AS.app("TextEdit").documents[1].text.get

Constructing the application object model query, translating
human-readable terminology to four-character codes, and packing and
unpacking Ruby values is all handled automatically, and the whole lot's
wrapped up in a very user-friendly OO-like syntax.

HTH