Multi-standalone communication

[Jim Ault]

On 12/9/06 2:47 AM, "Jesse Sng" <jsng at wayoflife.org> wrote:

> I wasn't talking about AppleScript, but AppleEvents. These are far
> simpler and much faster to send/receive and decode than AS.
> 
> 6 to 10 per second is probably not a problem for AppleEvents given
> that back in the 90s, AppleEvents were used to process CGIs on
> webservers running on Mac OS 8 and 9. AE wasn't quite a fast back
> then and it has improved quite a bit on OS X.
> 
> Basically, it would be used as a simple messaging mechanism that
> could incorporate the packaging of parameterized data. The OS would
> automatically queue the messages so that you can process it in
> sequence.
> 
> The key advantage is that is is simpler to manage than packet
> sending/receiving while still retaining much of the speed advantage.

I agree, AppleEvents are easier and faster than AppleScript.
However, in my particular case, it was UDP I used.
-1- I need both Win and Mac
-2- the Rev 'do script' was broken until 2.7  When I was using 2.6   I could
not be sure when this would be fixed and could not wait
-3- the data service uses UDP to broadcast, not AppleEvents
-4- low traffic rate for UDP is about 150 packets per second so that I do
not have to worry about "not being able to receive fast enough", thus lost
data is due to problems in my code

Most programmers I know get confused with AppleEvents.   I am not sure why
but they think they are mysterious and give up on them.  With the
AppleScript language, however, I spend half of my time wondering why they
came up with this syntax, and the other half trying to figure how to make it
do simple things.

It would be cool if you could make some useful example stacks that would
show 3 apps using AppleEvents.  I know Ken Ray has some good tips on his web
site, which I have happily used.

How would you use AppleEvents in your work flow?

Jim Ault
Las Vegas