Apple scripting extensions (Was: Re: kind of unit testing framework for StepTalk)

[Stefan Urbanek]

Hi,

I'm moving this to the list to share it with other gnustep developers.

On 2004-04-20 12:02:04 +0200 Helge Hess <helge.hess@opengroupware.org> wrote:

> Hi Stefan,
>
> did you ever consider using the Foundation scripting extensions done by Apple 
> for StepTalk?

Yes, I have thought about that... however, GNUstep does not provide them at the 
moment.

> While a few things are obviously AppleScript specific, a lot of things seem 
> to be rather generic and might be suitable for a lot of scripting languages.

You are right. Moreover, it can be suitable not only for lot of scripting languages but for more 
other usages as well! Most of classes and additions that Apple calls 'scripting *' are rather 
meta-data, or explicit information about objects for third parties. For example the 
NSClassDescription or NSScriptingClassDescription classes can be used not only for scripting, but 
also for higher-level object modelling. All those scripting additions are for creating tools 
applications using applications. NSScriptSuiteRegistry is nothing more than an interface 
description of a large "application object" or "framework object".

Another usage than scripting? Imagine a modelling language that describes a 
network of objects. It can use class descriptions or other information to 
provide outlets for connecting objects. It's not scripting, it is 
modelling...either simulation models, models functional blocks describing a 
data-processing filter, ... even Gorm can use that.

Currently there is the same problem as with some StepTalk features: lack of 
tools for creating meta-data (class descriptions, commands, scripting suite 
registry,...). It would be neat, if for example the Project Center has the 
ability to describe ivars as 'attributes' or 'to one/many relationships' and 
automaticaly creating class description. Or ability to list 'public' methods. 
This would need different approach to the Objective-C code editing to be easily 
usable: not file oriented, but class oriented.

It is not very encouraging if developers have to maintain information about 
same thing on different places (myclass.h, myclass.m, 
myclasssuite.scripSuite,...).

What do you think about all that?

Are there any plans to add apple scripting extensions to GNUstep? And are there 
any plans to add it to the Project Center?

Stefan Urbanek

p.s.: Before talking about -base bloat, please try to replace the word 
'scripting' with 'meta-data' to get different point of view :-) Classes tell 
about object's behaviour, 'scripting descriptions' tell about application's 
behaviour.
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