[MacPerl] MacPerl/Scriptable apps big picture?

[ftoth@synernet.com (Fred Toth)]

Hi all. I'm begging your indulgence here, but can someone give me the
big picture on the relationship between MacPerl and Scriptable applications?

To clarify my question: I've done some (too) extensive AppleScripts to
control Quark Xpress and found it to be an ugly business (though it does
in fact work mostly). I'm now gearing up to dive into Frontier, because the
menu sharing stuff is great for simple Quark users, and it's supposed
to be much faster than AppleScript.

Of course, what I'd really love to do is let MacPerl do all of the work,
especially the text processing, if possible (since basic text work
is all but impossible with AppleScript).

I've followed this list for some time, and watched with great interest
the discussions of MacPerl and toolbox access to Apple events, interfaces
to Frontier, OSA efforts, etc. I know things are in a state of flux...

But, I confess, I still can't get the big picture. If some kind soul
could boil it down a bit. Just what might be the best way to drive
Quark Xpress or similar? I'd like to grab text out of Quark and pass
it off to MacPerl for processing, then get it back into Quark, with
or without Frontier involved, etc.

If someone could share their model of how this should work, I'd
be grateful.

Many thanks,

Fred Toth
ftoth@synernet.com