Program Linking

[Ben Rubinstein]

Richard,

I agree with all of what you say about communication between Rev-based apps
(or more to the point, between collaboratively developed apps, regardless of
the development system); but that's just another whole ballpark.  I have a
number of utilities whose whole point is what they do to another standard
app (eg to Outlook Express, or various browsers,  or controlling a network
of special multimedia apps in some interactive galleries).  All of these
need an elegant way to select the app.

And I also agree that this shouldn't be the top priority for Rev/MC.  I
mentioned it once in improve-rev a few months ago, left it at that.  But
this thread started because someone else (JamesHBeckmann at aol.com) posted the
specific question, 

> is there a "answer program" command, that works on Macs.

To which the answer is no.  But he got a lot of replies saying that he could
do answer file etc etc etc which is not the same thing!

I would stop there and promise to keep my mouth shut from now on....

...But, yesterday sims <sims at ezpzapps.com> posted

> set fileAttachThis to choose file -- of type "TEXT"
> set fileList to {fileAttachThis}
> [snip]
> do .... as applescript

I thought this was yet another case of people thinking that answer program
is a local file browser, rather a network process browser.  And as posted,
the code above is just that - a particularly long winded way of doing
"answer file" (again!).  But it did make me test and discover, what sims may
have meant to post, that AppleScript has the functionality for answer
program built in.  Hence it turns out that an effective solution is
possible, as simply as this:

    function answerProgram
      do "choose application" as applescript
    end answerProgram

Phew!  Now I'll shut up.
 
  Ben Rubinstein               |  Email: benr_mc at cogapp.com
  Cognitive Applications Ltd   |  Phone: +44 (0)1273-821600
  http://www.cogapp.com        |  Fax  : +44 (0)1273-728866