From: Robert Schaaf <ruby-bucket@...>
Date: 2009-04-29T08:17:09+09:00
Subject: Re: Trouble with OSA and Excel

Hengist,

Thanks for the reply.  I have been using appscript for the better part  
of a year,  but thought to switch to RubyOSA with the idea that the  
whole dictionary would be pre-cached, and thus faster than resolving  
the terminology on invocation.  But maybe appscript does some similar  
caching?  I never found it slow, but wanted to optimize AppleEvents,  
which are high impedance to begin with.

BTW, where in the application bundle is the dictionary (formerly the  
'aete' resource) hidden?  I can't find Excel's.

Bob Schaaf


On Apr 28, 2009, at 8:00 AM, hengist podd wrote:

> Robert Schaaf wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>> This week's agony is with rdoc-osa and Excel 2008.  I'm trying to
>> create the documentation files, but the program hangs.  I suspect a
>> faulty AE dictionary.
>
> Most application dictionaries are not 100% perfect. AppleScript only
> uses the keyword-AE code mappings and ignores everything else, so any
> imperfections in the parts that AppleScript doesn't use often go
> unnoticed by application developers since everything works fine when
> tested in AppleScript.
>
> Other bridges that do rely on parts of dictionaries that AppleScript
> ignores (e.g. RubyOSA, Scripting Bridge) are far more sensitive to  
> such
> minor imperfections, and therefore much more likely to partly or
> completely break on them.
>
> Also note that RubyOSA ceased development about 18 months ago, so it  
> may
> or may not work with more recent Ruby releases.
>
> Your best bet would be to use rb-appscript (see my sig), which works
> much more like AppleScript so is a lot less prone to compatibility
> problems than RubyOSA or SB. Matt Neuburg wrote a good article a  
> couple
> years back on rb-appscript that includes an example of Excel  
> scripting:
>
> http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2007/02/27/replacing-applescript-with-ruby.html
>
> Documentation generation and code translation tools are at:
>
> http://appscript.sourceforge.net/tools.html
>
> HTH
>
> has
> --
> Control AppleScriptable applications from Python, Ruby and ObjC:
> http://appscript.sourceforge.net
> -- 
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
>