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

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Mon, 2004-03-29 at 05:18, Bill Haneman wrote:
> 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 

Yes, sorry.

> 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.

Which is the real problem.  You can't operate on data without having the
UI there and running, and manipulating it directly.  Plus, if the UI
undergoes massive changes (think Evolution 1.4 -> 2.0) it's quite likely
to break, even tho the same set of data operations could be exported
from both versions of the backend.

> 
> 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).

That's interesting.  Was this discussion on this list?  I don't recall
having seen/read it before.

> 
> - Bill
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-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.