Re: ns-do-applescript

[Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> Jon Snader <jcs@irreal.org> writes:
>
>> I don't understand the urgent—or, indeed, any—need to eliminate this
>> call. I've been using it for years to populate an Emacs buffer with
>> the URL of the current page displayed in Safari. I used to use
>> osascript as recommended by those advocating ns-do-applescript's
>> removal but moved to ns-do-applescript when osascript became
>> unacceptably slow. That issue may have been resolved but I've never
>> felt the need to revisit the matter.
>>
>> According the the 2020 Emacs survey, Mac users represent 26.6% of
>> Emacs users (https://emacssurvey.org/2020/) so it's hardly a niche
>> environment for Emacs. As macOS is the second largest user base, I
>> don't see how it hurts to make Mac users' life marginally easier.
>
> macOS is a proprietary operating system.  We don't try to make its users
> lives easier, we try to encourage them switch to GNU/Linux.  Supporting
> a feature that is only available there would just encourage users to use
> it.
>

This might be a reaonable argument when considering adding additional
support/integration, but falls short when referencing work which ahs
already been completed and has been part of Emacs for some time. 

> Not to mention that the AppleScript support has several bugs, including
> bug#39890, that I cannot fix or easily test, since AppleScript is not
> available in GNUstep.

Perhaps then your not the right person to address those bugs? Perhaps
they need to be addressed by someone who does actually use that
platform? 

The argument that leaving such functionality in place will encourage
users to use it seems somethwat flawed. This functionality is only
available if your running on that platform and if your already running
on that platform, encouragement to run on that platform doesn't amount
to much. I would also suggest far more enrouagement comes from having
support to build Emacs on that platform in the first place. 

It is also possible that having this support means users can actually
use Emacs to perform some tasks which would otherwise require closed
proprietary solutions or which would be easier to do with close
properietary solutions. Maybe this support actually enrouages users to
use Emacs instead of a non-free editor which has applescript support?