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You are correct about SB and JXA. Counterpoint: https://sourceforge.net/projects/appscript/files/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/appscript/files/ Type an A
by hhas02 5y ago
You are correct about SB and JXA.
Counterpoint:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/appscript/files/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/appscript/files/
Type an AppleScript command into ASTranslate[1] and run it, and you get its instant translation to Python/Ruby appscript syntax. Appscript users adored ASTranslate: it answered 95% of their “How do I…” questions at a tap of a button. Appscript was great tech—a genuine AppleScript replacement—but it was ASTranslate that sold it.
Back when I was enthusiastically supplying Sal Soghoian with 6 weeks of 100% free unpaid[2] JXA testing, feedback, and advice (up to and including writing a complete reference implementation of how a JavaScript OSA component should work for his team to learn/steal from), automatic AS-to-JS command translation I told him was THE Killer Feature Script Editor needed to make JXA a success.
And yes, I provided Sal a free reference implementation of this feature—see the JABDemo app[3] in the JavaScriptOSA zip file. (Still works!) Incredibly quick and simple too: just add a toggle switch to Script Editor’s existing Apple event logging pane, to choose which language to format outgoing Apple events in: AS or JXA. A couple hours’ work to implement and test; would’ve done more than a year’s user community support[4] to make JXA both instantly usable and popular AF.
Yep, I’d have done better advising a doorknob. #PEBKAC
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[1][3] You’ll need to do the right-click-to-open shuffle to get them to run, as these are ancient apps that I’ve not updated with modern codesigning and notarization. But they still run, and they still rock at what they do.
[2] Again, an important lesson in business learned. Never do world-expert consultancy for less than three figures an hour. Because jerks like that appreciate it by exactly as much as they pay for it. Give to them it for free, they don’t give a shit.
[4] Which they didn’t do either. And after Soghoian ghosted me, and made it clear that JXA was going to be garbage that they simply didn’t care about themselves, damned if I was going to do it for them either. Which is a shame, because after lead-authoring Apress’s monster Learn AppleScript 3rd edition, I could’ve knocked out “Learn JXA” in 6 months and sold JXA for them.