Re: [MacPerl] Frontier substitute

[Xah Lee <xah@best.com>]

Just to be fair, I just want to add a few points about Frontier.

I think Frontier is a very good product.

Frontier Mac is PPC native and thus is much much more faster than
AppleScript. Even the upcoming AppleScript will probably be slower
because some major parts are not completly native. The current speed of
AppleScript is quite a pain, even for simple tasks.

The Frontier language is much better than AppleScript, and more
powerful too. This is mostly because AppleScript, in order to be
extremely user frientdly, chose an English-like syntax that will
quickly become combersome for large scripts. Apple was supposed to make a
C-like syntax dialect but that never came about. Frontier
also has a complete set of build-in verb (commands) for MacOS scripting that
AppleScript lacks, even with all the scripting addition one can
get.

Frontier's web-building system is quite nice out of the box, but as I
said before, I think any good scripting system with a file system can
replace it in theory. (in practice, I guess systems are evaluated much
by what can be done "out of the box". (otherwise, we can do everyting
in C, in theory!))

There are few things going for AppleScript. Foremost, AppleScript is
supported by Apple and ships on every MacOS. It is better known and
has a wider audience (at least for now). On the other hand, Frontier
is Windows/MacOS bi-platform. Mere availability in Windows will
probably make it a lot more popular. If we consider the future, it is
hard to say which one will enhance the marketablity of a
programer. I believe that AppleScript is here to stay, but
 Apple is known to cut projects. Who can say what the Apple OS situation
will be in the next 2 years?

The other decidedly and strongly positive thing about AppleScript is that its
scripts can run stand-along. The engine is built-in in every
MacOS. While in Frontier (or MacPerl) one needs to have the apps too.

I think that MacPerl currently cannot be a complete replacement for
Frontier as a MacOS scripting system. I'm not knowledgable enough to
give the details. (perhaps someone can fill-in the exact tech reasons)
The tasks I have in minds are those desktop management, inter-
application scripting...etc.

With respect to comparisons of MacPerl vs Frontier vs AppleScript, I
think MacPerl is quite different. Perl (MacPerl) is a general purpose
scripting language particularly geared to text processing. For tasks
related to text processing, it blows both Frontier and AppleScript out
of the door. Perl isn't text processing limited in general, so it's
applicability extends to as far as prototyping large serious
programing projects. Frontier and AppleScript are out of the question.

Because of its generality, the
 user base of Perl also smites that of Frontier and AppleScript
combined. The markebility of a Perl knowledge is perhaps 100 times more
valuable than Frontier or AppleScript. (so if you are considering picking
up a language for future bread, Perl/MacPerl is the answer.) Perl is
here to stay, and will probably stay for a long long time after both
Frontier and AppleScript are dead.

Having said some negative things about Dave Winer, I think I should make
a point to say that there is no reason to begrudge a man who tries
to be rich (not necessarily implying that he is).
We are all different and have different agendas. I thank Dave Winer for having made
Frontier free. I just hope he stops publishing his "writings". (its quality
and content is on a par with elementary school children's)

>A couple of people have asked how I heard about the pricing scheme, since
>Userland hasn't posted anything.  
>
>They're doing a silly gimmick, informing people at a rate of one per minute in
>the order at which they registered frontier.  I placed the notice I received
>on the web, verbatim except for the addition of line breaks.
>
>http://espresso.hampshire.edu/~bumppo/frontiernews.txt

I just want to confirm that I got the same email. In any case, UserLand
has copyright to that email, so it's probably not a good idea to put it
up. Passing it around would be a good alternative.

 Xah, xah@best.com
 http://www.best.com/~xah/PageTwo_dir/more.html
 Mountain View, CA, USA


***** Want to unsubscribe from this list?
***** Send mail with body "unsubscribe" to mac-perl-request@iis.ee.ethz.ch