Re: [MacPerl] Accessing FileMaker Pro data

[Richard Gordon <gordon@mindspring.com>]

On 1/15/99 at 06:46, Arved_37@chebucto.ns.ca (Arved Sandstrom) wrote:

> I can't speak for Chris, but he does explain the motivation behind
> Mac::Glue in the accompanying HTML. It's quite basic: he likes Perl and
> doesn't like AppleScript.
>
I recall seeing that, but was wondering if there was a less subjective
reason like maybe relative execution speeds?
  
> It's mostly a syntax argument. I've used AppleScript just a bit, and I
> have to agree with him. AppleScript (at least the English dialect, which
> is the only one I've looked at) is pretty terrible for intuitively
> expressing what I want to do. It's on a par with CorelScript when it comes
> right down to it, as far as I'm concerned. AppleScript is verbose,
> excessively so. Also, in Perl there are usually umpteen ways of doing
> something - note the word "doing" - it strikes me that in AppleScript
> there are umpteen different ways of *writing* something.
>
As far as syntax goes, I heard sometime back that the mysterious Programmers
Dialect for AppleScript that was never actually released had been dusted off
and might be forthcoming. Whether you would find that more to your tastes
remains to be seen, but I have always inferred that it would be more terse
than the English Dialect.

Often, there are (or at least can be) many ways to do things in AppleScript,
but pursuing them tends to drop you off in the dark world of OSAXen and, to
me, that's a much bigger problem than verbosity (since AppleScript was
originally designed to be an ultra high level language, it's not surprising
that it's verbose). One thing that appeals to me about MacPerl aside from
its amazingly fast text manipulation power is that it appears to offer a lot
of OS level functionality that could be used to extend AppleScript without
having to mess with OSAXen.

> So it's mostly about harnessing AppleEvents, cutting AppleScript out of
> the loop, and letting Perl take over. All personal preference, really.
Okay, that's pretty much what I figured. In terms of working with FileMaker
and MacPerl specifically, the approach may depend on which one you consider
is the tail and which one is the dog. Since AppleScripts can be embedded in
FileMaker databases (and run faster than normally) and FileMaker is one of
the few applications that I know of that can send tell statements to itself,
I tend to look at it as the dog for control purposes if it is involved in a
project even if the ultimate output is coming from elsewhere like Quark (or
MacPerl for that matter). I'll probably give Mac::Glue a try before long and
maybe I'll be persuaded otherwise then.

Richard Gordon
Gordon Consulting & Design
Voice: 770-565-8267  Fax: 770-971-6887



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