[MacPerl-Toolbox] Mac::Glue ponderings

[Chris Nandor <pudge@pobox.com>]

Looking at all of this OSA stuff, I wonder if there might be another way.
Here is a thought of another way to do this:

  use Mac::Glue;
  use Mac::MoreFiles;
  $finder = Mac::Glue->new('Finder');
  $finder->select( 'startup disk' );
  $finder->open('selection', { using => qq[alias "$Application{'R*ch'}"] });
  $finder->glue_finish;

This would get converted to the text:

  tell application "Finder"
    select startup disk
    open selection using alias "HD:BBEdit 5.0:BBEdit 5.0"
  end tell

And it would be compiled down into an OSA script.  Then it could be executed:

  $finder->glue_execute;

Of course, there is a big downside here: it takes a lot longer to compile
an OSA script than it does to execute an Apple Event.

#!perl -w
use Benchmark;
use Mac::OSA::Simple;
use Mac::AppleEvents::Simple;
use strict;
use vars qw($as $osa $as_c $osa_c);

$Mac::AppleEvents::Simple::SWITCH = 0;

# two ways to do same thing
$as = [qw[misc slct MACS],
  q"'----':obj {form:prop, want:type(prop), seld:type(sdsk), from:'null'()}"];

$osa = <<EOS;
tell application "Finder"
	select startup disk
end tell
EOS

# compile it first
$as_c = build_event(@$as);
$osa_c = compile_applescript($osa);

timethese(100, {
  AppleEvents => 'do_event(@$as)',
  OSA => 'applescript($osa)',
  AppleEvents_C => '$as_c->send_event',  # note, there is a bug in
                                         # current Mac::AppleEvents::Simple
                                         # so this will not work for you :)
  OSA_C => '$osa_c->execute'
});
__END__

Benchmark: timing 100 iterations of AppleEvents, AppleEvents_C, OSA, OSA_C...
AppleEvents:  5 secs ( 5.10 usr  0.00 sys =  5.10 cpu)
AppleEvents_C:  5 secs ( 4.80 usr  0.00 sys =  4.80 cpu)
       OSA:  8 secs ( 8.33 usr  0.00 sys =  8.33 cpu)
     OSA_C:  6 secs ( 5.43 usr  0.00 sys =  5.43 cpu)

Unfortnately, precompiling the OSA script and storing it (in the file
resource fork, for instance) is not a good option, because often there will
be perl expressions passed to the scripts which would need to be evaluated
at run time.

So, comments or thoughts?

--
Chris Nandor          mailto:pudge@pobox.com         http://pudge.net/
%PGPKey = ('B76E72AD', [1024, '0824090B CE73CA10  1FF77F13 8180B6B6'])

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