Re: [MACTCL] Making a Tk app scriptable via AppleScript

[Philip A. <phi...@sh...>]

On 2009-08-17, at 07:30:44, Daniel A. Steffen wrote:

> as far as a replacement for 'aete' is concerned, we will definitely  
> need a .sdef for TkAqua Cocoa to replicate the old functionality,  
> contributions by you or Philip much appreciated...

I have made some inroads into adapting the code I had for 8.5.7 to the  
8.6.x source I picked up yesterday. It went much smoother than I had  
anticipated and is now working close to 100%. With a few compiler  
conditionals, the same source file should be usable back to at least  
10.4 targets. The only thing I haven't specifically addressed is to  
unify the behavior between the script handler and mouse/menu  
activities for 'quit'. Quit, as called from a script is working as  
expected in the namespaced procs in AppMain.tcl though. All the  
scripts in the top level of the Wishbone "Scripts" folder in this  
second version are working OMM:

<http://www.vcn.bc.ca/~philip/Wishbone101.zip>

About the Show Preferences item, I'm very happy to say that the  
problems I was having with the 8.5.7 source are completely resolved  
with this 8.6 version.

For the sdef in Wishbone 1.0.1, it's currently full of whopping big  
lies. But it's real easy to delete what's not currently supported and  
I should be able to pare it down to a few fibs and make it reflect  
quite accurately the abilities of the C code. I'd reckon about 2 more  
hours but don't expect have free time until tomorrow evening.

It might be good to give some thought to extra parameters for the  
standard calls that could be practically useful (in the general sense)  
for Tk application developers to have available. For instance, in the  
preferences command I've added a 'with/out window visible' parameter.  
When this is called from a menu or a mouse-click, of course it will be  
shown. But a scriptor has the ability to just retrieve the values  
without showing the window. The Quit item has saving options choices  
of yes, no, and ask (this is a Cocoa default) whereas the old  
scripting code didn't include this choice. I would actually need to  
have other opinions about what this quitting default for mouse/menu  
should be. I would think, because of the old behavior, that the  
default should be 'no' but don't know the consensus.

Also, since I see you mentioned in a later post that there is already  
an update to the tkMacOSXHLEvents.c file, I'm wondering how to best  
approach these changes? The new code is a complete re-design (3 times  
the size of the old) that will invoke the old handers and namespaced  
procs as a second choice. So some things need to be cut out because  
there's a different initialization implementation and new set of UPP  
installation calls. IOW, I need some time to slice and dice for things  
like placing the prototypes and custom structs so that the file is  
ordered correctly…


Philip Aker
echo as...@lv...@nl | tr a-z@. p-za-o.@

Democracy: Two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.