scripting [Was: Where we stand in regard to the future platform / desktop technology]

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman Sun COM>]

Sean said:

> Lack of good application scripting is one of the things that sucks most
> about GNOME, and that both Windows and OS X have gotten very, very
> right.  You can't control the desktop without using the UI itself, or
> making UI-dependent atk-based scripts.  
I think you mean "at-spi"-based scripts.  AFAICS such scripts are no 
more application-dependent than COM scripts, though it's true that 
at-spi operates on the same "view" and "controller" as the primary UI, 
it doesn't expose the application's data model.

There's a piece of API available in at-spi/ATK which would allow 
exposing the model (AtkDocument), but there's been no good proposal on 
how to implement and expose it properly (there was a suggestion of using 
W3C DOM but DV indicated that there were serious technical issues with 
exposing DOM via CORBA).

- Bill