🚀 go-pugleaf

On Dec 16, 2003, at 9:36 AM, Jarema wrote:

>  I mean what for improvements cause changing names of properties or 
> methods?

I gather some of it was done to unify the terminology across the 
scripting languages, which should make life easier for many in the long 
run.

> Window = LayoutWindow

This was a change in the object model with the introduction of the 
story editor.

> I am watching this from the beginning of InDesign and I don't 
> understand why they do that. There are some properties which changes 
> their names in every new release of the Program.

Well there have really only been four releases. I suspect the number of 
people affected each time been relatively small.

> Is it not a basic rule of COM based developing to keep interfaces 
> backward compatible?

I don't know. I've never seen it listed as any more than an ideal in 
any programming. But the process inevitably involves trade-offs.

>  I don't care about what changes was done
> to new version of InDesign - implementation of old OM for the outside 
> world shouldn't change to avoid additional work for plug-in developer.

Scripters aren't plug-in developers. On a personal note, I lobbied hard 
for several changes to the AppleScript object model -- all, I think, 
improvements. Sure, some changes break scripts, but they also make some 
things possible that were otherwise much more difficult or cumbersome. 
This is my idea of progress, which rarely comes at no cost.

> Every time a new version is released you have to search the whole 
> object model to find all changes to make your script new version 
> compatible. Not even a small list of changes is provided by Adobe. I 
> call it a bad way to deal with customers.

In principle I have sympathy with you on this. But I can only speak 
from my own perspective, and I've found that with each release nearly 
every script warrants significant work anyway simply because of the 
dramatic changes to the app -- new features often mean new ways of 
doing things, and so on. So yes, from the point of view of just keeping 
old scripts working, it can be a pain. But at the same time I think 
that not examining one's scripts and reworking them to take advantage 
of the upgrades is giving poor service to the users of scripts.

> The problem I think is from the beginning a "bad reputation" of 
> scripting at all. I remember on the developer conference in Amsterdam 
> which was make to help developert to write some plug-ins for 1.0 
> nobody from the whole Adobe team was able to answer a simple question 
> : who is responsible for scripting support and implementation - the 
> only answer was ....I don't know and ... we don't recommend to use 
> scripting - all should be programmed with API.

Not a surprising answer at a developer conference ;-). And in terms of 
plug-ins, I believe it's quite correct.

> Well, I guess till today there is only one, maybe two guys responsible 
> for scripting support for InDesign and maybe that's why scripting 
> library is not able to create stand alone plug-ins for InDesign.

I don't think that's ever been the _intent_ of scripting. There's a 
separate SDK for plug-in developers.

>  I hope it will change in the future.

And I hope they keep being bold.

Cheers,

--
Shane Stanley <sstanley@myriad-com.com.au>