OSX GUI Manipulation?

[Richard Gaskin]

bfr at nwlink.com wrote:

 >>> Well I thought I made it quite clear that automating other
 >>> applications is the whole point of my question.
 >>
 >> That was clear.  What do you want to do that AppleScript
 >> doesn't support?
 >
 > Sigh.
 >
 > Controlling the GUI of unscriptable applications.

Sigh.

You mentioned "an OS X application", so I thought you might have a 
specific one in mind.

Reading the rest of my post may leave you less easily exasperated:

     I know of only two ways to control other apps:  AppleScript,
     as we've been discussing, and system-level APIs which will
     let you hook into the event mechanism.

     Rev supports AppleScript, and Rev supports an interface to
     allow you to write externals to communicate between Transcript
     and OS APIs.

     What do you want to do that is not covered by these?
     What third mechanism is iKey using?

You needn't answer those questions for me.  It's clear that my 
inexperience leaves me with nothing to offer you, and I generally avoid 
platform-specific technologies anyway so it's of little interest to me; 
I was just trying to help.

But the questions are central to the stated problem, so answering them 
will give you what you're looking for.

However, if such a mechanism is undocumented by the OS vendor there may 
be a reason for that.  One can hardly expect a development tool that 
runs on 12 platforms to spend much time with undocumented (read "highly 
likely to change on a whim") APIs.

Monkeying with unsactioned APIs may be worthwhile for a simpler 
single-platform consumer utility focused on such things like iKey, for 
whom such a task is the only fish they're frying.  But RunRev already 
provides two Apple-sanctioned ways of dealing with inter-app events 
(high-level with AppleScript and low-level with externals) and I think 
most of its customers would rather see them focus on other things than 
creating dependencies on undocumented APIs that Apple can rightfuly yank 
out from under us at any time.

The folks at FaceSpan seems like pretty smart people.  If they dropped 
support for certain types of control between v3 and v4 there may be a 
reason -- what did they say when you asked them?

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
  ___________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com