(This is key: the API is much richer than just a URL scheme with some text, which is what weâre limited to on iOS) The function parameters are not limited to strings â you can send binary data (image data, for instance), arrays, etc.The other app is an already-running instance: Apple events do not result in a new instance of an app (exception: if an app isnât running, you can, conveniently, launch it via an Apple event).Roughly put â theyâre a way of calling a function, with parameters, in an app and getting back a result. But itâs very possible that Apple, without automation, might not have lasted long enough to get to Steve Jobs. You might say that Steve Jobs â or the iMac or the iPod or NeXT technology â saved Apple. And apps like QuarkXPress which were scriptable. Instead, there was AppleScript and UserLand Frontier and an underlying bit of technology called Apple events. This was before Mac OS X: there was no UNIX automation. When you can automate, you can save time and money. Desktop publishing was huge and very Mac-centric, and that was in part because the various tools were automatable. How to save a computer companyĪpple events (lowercase âeâ is correct) arguably saved Apple in the â90s. Whatâs going on here? Itâs AppleScript, sure â but, under the hood, itâs Apple events. Now it takes a minute or less â and itâs error-free. This used to take hours, and it was prone to errors. Updates and saves (on a shared folder) a Keynote presentation with the new numbers.Creates and sends an email (via Mail), with the new numbers, that goes to the CEO.Uploads that HTML page to the companyâs internal CMS.Creates an HTML page from a template, including the new numbers.Tells FileMaker Pro to open a specific database, and then adds those numbers to the database.Extracts the actual numbers (minus Bobâs signature, etc.).With that email in front of her, she double-clicks a script (or chooses one from a scripts menu), which: She gets an email from Bob every month with the latest WidgetX numbers. PS My favorite, though written quite a while ago, is the Coding Guidelines. How NetNewsWire Avoids Parsing Feeds â talks about using Conditional GET and other methods to avoid parsing feeds. (The âOn My Macâ thing is an account later youâll be able to add accounts for Feedbin and other systems.) Note that the tech notes are part of the repo, and they appear in the workspace tree, so everybody who checks out the code has a local copy always at hand.Īccounts â notes about the accounts system. Iâll be posting links on this blog as I write them. Thatâs fine! But itâs a real, working app, and I like the idea of having explanations of how it works and why it works that way. In fact, some are just okay, and some might be bad. I donât claim that every decision Iâve made is brilliant. Itâs one thing to have an open source app, and quite another to have one that anybody â even, or especially, new programmers â can read about and come to understand. In part because I believe this is a good practice for any software project â but even more because I want NetNewsWire to be completely knowable by anybody whoâs interested. Iâm writing some documents about NetNewsWireâs code and architecture.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |