Re: Changes 2009-07-15/16 in branch?

[Harald Hanche-Olsen <hanche@math.ntnu.no>]

+ Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>:

> What is Applescript?  What does it do?

It provides a way for programs to control applications without the
need for GUI interaction. (IMO, an absolute necessity in a
GUI-dominated world.)

>  Can you show me an example of what people do with it?

Here is a banal example:

(ns-do-applescript
 "tell application \"TextEdit\" to open \"/Users/hanche/Desktop/Info.rtf\"")

This opens an existing RTF file in TextEdit and returns t if
successful. More specialized control is possible if the application in
question provides a dictionary of applescript commands pertaining to
that program.

I am not sure how this functionality can be replaced by DBUS, unless
someone comes up with a program that will accept applescript requests
via DBUS and run them. I can't comment on the feasibility of writing
such a program.

> How does it relate to Emacs?  Does it mean people can extend Emacs
> with Applescript programs?  Or can they only run Emacs from it, like
> from a shell script?

As far as I can tell, emacs does not provide an applescript
dictionary, so only rudimentary control is available. For instance,
you can run

  osascript -e 'tell application "emacs" to open "/etc/passwd"'

from the command line and it does what you might expect. But extending
emacs with applescript? I don't think so.

Does this answer your question?

- Harald