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> The future of initiatives like Siri needs robust inter-app scripting. That's a really good point. Siri would have enormously benefited from a robust, powerfu

> The future of initiatives like Siri needs robust inter-app scripting. That's a really good point. Siri would have enormously benefited from a robust, powerful automation ecosystem. Even if they don't use it directly it could have been the base for all Siri actions and the distance from automation to Siri would be much smaller than going all the way to Siri from where we are now. Apple missed a big opportunity.

hhas01 8y ago
+1 That Apple still can’t put 1 and 1 together shows just how utterly ignorant they are of the mind-bogglingly powerful product technology they’ve been sitting on for the last 25 years. The great irony is that unlike painfully tedious low-level object-oriented API/IPC systems like DOM, CORBA, and SOAP, the Apple Event Object Model (the IPC architecture used in “AppleScriptable” applications) is driven via RPC using simple, high-level relational QUERIES. VERY powerful, amazingly (when it works right) elegant. Apple event IPC has its issues—inconsistent implementations, notoriously inadequate interface descriptions, and a security model rocking it like it’s 1995—but it’s still remarkably close to being Siri-drivable, and has the massive benefit that it’s already implemented in hundreds of apps and is free for the taking. (Or would be, if Apple hadn’t left Sal to run it into the ground.) .. Not coincidentally, I put together a proof of concept for a hybrid Logo/AppleScript replacement a couple years back, designed from the start not just to enable traditional text entry, but also to be skinnable in a Workflow-like GUI or even driven by voice. Other commitments got in the way, but POC files are here: https://bitbucket.org/hhas/entoli/src/master/README.txt https://bitbucket.org/hhas/entoli/src/master/README.txt Key USP: true whitespace support in command names, making them very easy for non-programmers to read and write, particularly with modern autosuggest+correct+complete assistance (command interfaces are fully introspectable too). Add Apple event capabilities (https://bitbucket.org/hhas/swiftae/src/master/ https://bitbucket.org/hhas/swiftae/src/master/) and wrap some friendly end-user tools around it, it’d be very powerful indeed. Classic turtle example: Turn right 135°, pen down, move forward 2.5mm, turn left 90°, move forward 20cm, pen up. Named “entoli” (phonetic Greek for “instruct” or “command”) in HT to Seymour’s Logo, but also nicknamed “SiriScript” for fairly obvious reasons. :)

hhas01 8y ago

+1 That Apple still can’t put 1 and 1 together shows just how utterly ignorant they are of the mind-bogglingly powerful product technology they’ve been sitting on for the last 25 years. The great irony is that unlike painfully tedious low-level object-oriented API/IPC systems like DOM, CORBA, and SOAP, the Apple Event Object Model (the IPC architecture used in “AppleScriptable” applications) is driven via RPC using simple, high-level relational QUERIES. VERY powerful, amazingly (when it works right) elegant. Apple event IPC has its issues—inconsistent implementations, notoriously inadequate interface descriptions, and a security model rocking it like it’s 1995—but it’s still remarkably close to being Siri-drivable, and has the massive benefit that it’s already implemented in hundreds of apps and is free for the taking. (Or would be, if Apple hadn’t left Sal to run it into the ground.) .. Not coincidentally, I put together a proof of concept for a hybrid Logo/AppleScript replacement a couple years back, designed from the start not just to enable traditional text entry, but also to be skinnable in a Workflow-like GUI or even driven by voice. Other commitments got in the way, but POC files are here: https://bitbucket.org/hhas/entoli/src/master/README.txt https://bitbucket.org/hhas/entoli/src/master/README.txt Key USP: true whitespace support in command names, making them very easy for non-programmers to read and write, particularly with modern autosuggest+correct+complete assistance (command interfaces are fully introspectable too). Add Apple event capabilities (https://bitbucket.org/hhas/swiftae/src/master/ https://bitbucket.org/hhas/swiftae/src/master/) and wrap some friendly end-user tools around it, it’d be very powerful indeed. Classic turtle example: Turn right 135°, pen down, move forward 2.5mm, turn left 90°, move forward 20cm, pen up. Named “entoli” (phonetic Greek for “instruct” or “command”) in HT to Seymour’s Logo, but also nicknamed “SiriScript” for fairly obvious reasons. :)