Scripting

[Florian Karsten]

On 12/27/2018 at 12:19 PM, fde101 said:

The issue here is that any "one" way that works on both platforms will be limited to working only within the application.  Support for OS-level scripting languages such as AppleScript allows multiple programs to be tied together and automated using a single script, so that the functionality of several scriptable applications can be combined.  A scripting language built-in to the product can't do that.  There is a place for both.

I am not sure if we are not mixing up things together.

I thought that you meant using apple script as scripting language for Affinity products (it's not only about publisher). Meaning scripts that Affinity can run to control itself (and get low level control) like transforming text, populating frames with images, get data from excell table, connecting to web to grab something, drawing points and lines... basically anything. For this AppleScript would be a bad choice because its old (last version 2014) and does not have any ecosystem (dont forget the amount of libraries javascript or python already have for any possible usecase) and it's not open-source.

It seems that you talk about ability of Affinity programs to be programmable/automatable from outside with applescript or things like automator. This is very different thing. But this type of programmable user actions is on OS level and you can already do it.

If you put this in OSX  Script Editor

tell application "Affinity Publisher Beta"
	activate
	open "/Users/user/Documents/test.afpub"
end tell

It will work and you can script user actions in the software.

I guess adobe is exposing more controls to OS so more things can be automated this way (and they have it documented here https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/devnet/photoshop/scripting/Photoshop-CS6-AppleScript-Ref.pdf ) so you might want to want for Affinity to think about this. Who knows maybe it is easy for them to expose more functionality this way. There is probably some work needed to be done so script editor get documentation like some other software (screenshot of Adobe Illustrator) currently it doesnt.

By the way Apple it seems is already moving away from Applescript to Javascript for OS level automation. In script editor you can switch to Javascript mode and do everything. They cal it JXA - javascript automaton. https://apple-dev.groups.io/g/jxa/wiki/JXA-Resources  

 

But overall i think people in this thread are mainly interested fairly low level scripting access to Affinity products.

Personally i never found much that much usecase for automation of GUI apps on OS level. On the other hand what i totally need for my work is to generate PDFs. Imagine for example you are making book of all pantone colors from excel table - this would be insane without automation (and yes you can generate those pdfs somewhere else but ability to still edit afterwards is priceless).

[fde101]

1 hour ago, Florian Karsten said:

But this type of programmable user actions is on OS level and you can already do it.

There is a limited set of actions that virtually all Mac software will implement as scriptable, including the ones you showed for Publisher.

The underlying "open document" action is the same one that is used behind the scenes to ask the application to open a file that you double-click in the Finder for example, so that one just about needs to be there.  

[hawk]

1 hour ago, fde101 said:

There is a limited set of actions that virtually all Mac software will implement as scriptable, including the ones you showed for Publisher.

The underlying "open document" action is the same one that is used behind the scenes to ask the application to open a file that you double-click in the Finder for example, so that one just about needs to be there.  

Yes, and other things don't work. For example, I wanted to get the current document file path to put into Quicksilver (a productivity app like Alfred), and I couldn't make it work. `get path of first document` results in an error. This should be a simple thing to do, but I ended up having to use a much more complicated workaround and it's not reliable.

[Florian Karsten]

Sorry i didn't mean to imply that it is working right now. I wanted to say that it is separate thing and even if it worked it is not sufficient for scripting.

[mcglk]

Being able to automate InDesign was one of the main reasons I gravitated to it for so long; I was able to write scripts that would generate barcodes on the fly, populate label sheets from a database with full control over placement, all sorts of things. That said, Adobe's AppleScript support has always been half-hearted, and now Apple seems to be putting AppleScript in the let-it-die department. It's extremely disappointing.

So while full AppleScript support would be nice, it might be considerably wiser if there were an independent scripting engine for Affinity Publisher (and Designer and Photo, to be honest). But it'd have to be able to take input from the Unix world (I routinely generate AppleScripts from Python or Perl and use `osascript` to run them, for example; I'd need a similar process for Affinity applications).

[Seneca]

On 9/12/2018 at 12:12 AM, kimtorch said:

I believe Python would turn existing ID users off

Not necessarily true.

A number of inDesign scripters asked for Python on inDesign scripting forum. See the post by no other than Peter Karel somewhere in this forum.

[fde101]

The whole indentation-as-syntax thing Python has going on reminds me of FORTRAN 77 in which you would make a comment by putting the letter "C" in column 1, columns 2-5 were for labels, etc...

I know there are those who love it, but to go back to that now that we have moved on from punched cards feels programmer-hostile to me and kind of turned me off to that language.

[mcglk]

As long as one can feed scripts into a shell-level program à la `osascript`, I don't really care what language Serif chooses for the purpose. Sure, it'd be nice to have an API one could call, but then, that would put a hard limitation on what languages you could use. As far as I'm concerned, I don't need to write entire programs in whatever language Serif uses; I just need to be able to create objects and have control over all the attributes I'd normally use the UI for.

fde101: While I've gotten used to the indentation thing, it still bugs me a bit. I'm not sure Python reminds me of punchcards, though; indentation would have seemed wasteful, and made it much more difficult to shuffle the order of statements if you needed to. . . .

[kimtorch]

9 hours ago, Seneca said:

Not necessarily true.

A number of inDesign scripters asked for Python on inDesign scripting forum. See the post by no other than Peter Karel somewhere in this forum.

I haven't had a lot to say here because - to be frank - we don't need Affinity Designer. I WANT to change to Designer, but we already run successfully with the Adobe products and can continue to do so. The point I'm trying to make is that Affinity need to persuade or entice existing ID scripters with a compelling reason to move. They're not going to do that by trashing everything they've invested in either Applescript or Javascript with ID.

The other issue that people keep ignoring is inter-application scripting. I don't just want to script Affinity Designer - I want to talk to Filemaker, Mail, Capture One, Acrobat and any number of other scriptable applications. Just targeting your own app would b very shortsighted and really misses the point of what can be achieved with lateral thinking.

[BAT]

8 hours ago, fde101 said:

The whole indentation-as-syntax thing Python has going on reminds me of FORTRAN 77 in which you would make a comment by putting the letter "C" in column 1, columns 2-5 were for labels, etc...

I know there are those who love it, but to go back to that now that we have moved on from punched cards feels programmer-hostile to me and kind of turned me off to that language.

I really don't understand this comparison with Python and Fortran that I come across a lot. Python doesn't restrict where you indent to - the indentation (1 space, 4 spaces, 8 spaces, 1 tab whatever) just marks a block - if things line up they are in the same block. It's no more arbritary than having to use '{' and '}' in C/C++/JS or "begin"/"end" in other languages. Not really a lot like punch-cards (and yes I remember those and programming in Fortran et al.). I've found that beginners find it easier than having to remember to use '{' and '}' and the inconsistencies in C/C++ about where you use braces but YMMV on that. I work as a freelance developer and most C/C++ I see uses Allman (except in the Linux Kernel where it's K&R) and every virtually customer that I work at has coding guidelines for JS/C/C++/C# etc.that enforce a house style - I don't find any of these programmer-hostile, it's just another set of rules to follow (or break ).

Having said all that - I'd be quite happy for any generic scripting language to appear in the Affinity suite  - Javascript, Python or whatever;  there are advantages and disadvantages to all scripting languages.

[Seneca]

8 hours ago, kimtorch said:

I haven't had a lot to say here because - to be frank - we don't need Affinity Designer.

I'm sure you meant Publisher.

Clearly, not everybody needs Adobe either, judging by the number of people posting or participating in this forum. So your argument is rather moot.

 Whether it's Python, JavaScript, Lua or any other scripting language it will be chosen by the devs and we will get on with it.

IAC ( Inter-Application Communication) is certainly something that would be incredibly useful to have.

[Steps]

16 hours ago, fde101 said:

The whole indentation-as-syntax thing Python has going on reminds me of FORTRAN 77 in which you would make a comment by putting the letter "C" in column 1, columns 2-5 were for labels, etc...

I know there are those who love it, but to go back to that now that we have moved on from punched cards feels programmer-hostile to me and kind of turned me off to that language.

I don't think they will provide a Java/Groovy API just for me. To bad. 

Ruby is ja nice language, too.

Or do it in Brainfuck. 

[beige]

vote for Python. Just great for string processing, regexes, path management and all other stuff that goes with image and text processing. 

[kimtorch]

13 minutes ago, beige said:

vote for Python. Just great for string processing, regexes, path management and all other stuff that goes with image and text processing. 

So how do you handle these things now in your existing InDesign scripted workflow?

[mcglk]

Since InDesign came out (and for QuarkXPress before that, back to 1994), I used Perl to generate short AppleScript snippets that would then do the application control. That way, I had the best of both worlds: regexes and lots of libraries around, yet still could control the dang application.

I'm really missing my barcode-generator scripts lately.

[Thomm]

I think the most misunderstood and overlooked argument for AppleScript is:  Hey it is like English!

Better would be: Hey I can switch for instance to German/Dutch dialect like scripts, to make the computer more human to use.....

If Apple would not as stupid as it is today and since the last 8 years (TCook) and would refocus to create GREAT APPS instead of reinventing again and again even worser wheels and deliver more and more awful software (iWork).. we could combine all the genius ideas from different apps with one tool (and NO Swift/Mojave are the opposite of great. It is only the jump back to Carbon (Copland) trash before NeXT, the "inventor" of this so called Swift meanwhile was fired at TESLA for his genius )

With AppleScript You can include all the other languages (JavaScript, UNIX-Shell, Python etc.) system wide so the advice to take for instance JavaScript/Python doesn't fit to the main goal to make apps interoperable maybe  over the borders of one OS (OSX/Windows/Linux/GNUstep/FreeBSD)......

As far as I know there is no script language on other platforms to interoperate between apps with a human like dialect right?

One main reason Adobe still dominates the whole market of graphic software for decades now with its x-times overpriced apps: All the apps are scriptable with the natural like script language: Applescript.

With Adobe Software (hated or not) you can create workflows that save you money at the end!!!

If you want to break the domination of Photoshop you don't only have to make equal/or better routines for manipulating photos inside Affinity photo and sell it 10 times cheaper you have to make it accessible from outside via scripts to make workflows possible.

May I include the following link to the CMD-D CONFERENCE 2017 VIDEOS were the old AppleScript guru Sal Soghoian  (fired 2016?) explains the advances of automation.

All videos are interesting, especially The "Why" of automation :-).

http://www.cmddconf.com/2017/videos.html

 

Best regards

 

p.s. Sorry for my bad English.

 

 

 

 

[HenrikM]

If I could choose the scripting language, I'd definitely go with Python over Javascript or Applescript.

Applescript is out, because I currently use a PC running Windows.

Javascript is a horrible mess of a language. I have used Javascript rather extensively in the past, because I got very well paid to do it. Today, I am not remotely interested in using it, for any reason.

Python is a well designed, easy to learn, and very powerful language with very extensive support in the form of libraries. It fits very well with professional programming practices like TDD and BDD.

If choosing between those three, Python is the best choice by far.

[fde101]

10 hours ago, HenrikM said:

Python is a well designed, easy to learn, and very powerful language

It is a snake; it will come back to byte you...

[Old Bruce]

2 hours ago, fde101 said:

It is a snake; it will come back to byte you...

...just a bit of a byte though...

[angelhdz12]

Python or C#!

Edited: Python is best! Simple syntax, yet powerful! String interpolation, generators, list comprehension, array/string slicing, no static data typing, etc.

[ehigiepaul]

JavaScript is best to use because all os has a built in JavaScript engine and it has a faster adoption. Typescript can also improve coding for the SDK and others.

What ever language Serif team choose will we will learn it but please dont create your own scripting language.

 

[fde101]

11 hours ago, angelhdz12 said:

Python or C#!

Two of the worst scripting languages to have been designed.

Python because of its odd use of indentation as syntax, and C# because its code looks too much like C.

 

8 hours ago, ehigiepaul said:

JavaScript is best to use because all os has a built in JavaScript engine and it has a faster adoption.

No, it just happens to be something that we are stuck with in web development because no one wants to break compatibility with what everyone else is using (and because it happens to be standardized).  Just because web browsers are stuck with it doesn't mean we should be.

 

Lua would be a much better choice than any of these.

[angelhdz12]

20 minutes ago, fde101 said:

Two of the worst scripting languages to have been designed.

Python because of its odd use of indentation as syntax, and C# because its code looks too much like C.

 

No, it just happens to be something that we are stuck with in web development because no one wants to break compatibility with what everyone else is using (and because it happens to be standardized).  Just because web browsers are stuck with it doesn't mean we should be.

 

Lua would be a much better choice than any of these.

Sure, you can have an opinion, and we respect it. But if most people says Python it's best, you can't fight that. For this same issues is why polls and voting systems exist.

I come from bracket and static datatype languages, and when I discovered Python, that opened a world of possibilities for me. For example, I ditched Batch in favor of Python to develop tools to solve my daily life tasks.

Tabs are basic and common in normal text writing anyways, for example, to start a new paragraph.

You can love Lua all you want, but bashing Python over that, it's silly. "Lua is better than Python because I love it". No, it doesn't work that way.

Blender (3D modelling and animation software) uses Python.
Adobe Flash (now Adobe Animate) uses JSFL, a flash port of JSAPI, a Javascript API .
Web browsers use Javascript for their extensions development.

Last words:

It makes sense to have Python as the language to automate Affinity Programs tasks. If not Python, then Javascript. These 2 languages are common among graphic designers that also become frontend developers, because of their simple syntax.

I dream about Python replacing Javascript for the web. I want to know your opinions on this guys!


 

[ehigiepaul]

35 minutes ago, angelhdz12 said:

Sure, you can have an opinion, and we respect it. But if most people says Python it's best, you can't fight that. For this same issues is why polls and voting systems exist.

I come from bracket and static datatype languages, and when I discovered Python, that opened a world of possibilities for me. For example, I ditched Batch in favor of Python to develop tools to solve my daily life tasks.

Tabs are basic and common in normal text writing anyways, for example, to start a new paragraph.

You can love Lua all you want, but bashing Python over that, it's silly. "Lua is better than Python because I love it". No, it doesn't work that way.

Blender (3D modelling and animation software) uses Python.
Adobe Flash (now Adobe Animate) uses JSFL, a flash port of JSAPI, a Javascript API .
Web browsers use Javascript for their extensions development.

Last words:

It makes sense to have Python as the language to automate Affinity Programs tasks. If not Python, then Javascript. These 2 languages are common among graphic designers that also become frontend developers, because of their simple syntax.

I dream about Python replacing Javascript for the web. I want to know your opinions on this guys!


 

True talk. Am a developer and my strength is in nodejs(javascript/typescript),c++ and c#, I have no preference for scripting. If Serif team choose any other language i will just have to learn it to build my automation or plugin. I hope this happens soon and wish the team all the best on this wonderful product.

[fde101]

1 hour ago, angelhdz12 said:

You can love Lua all you want

I don't really.  I haven't actually found any scripting languages that I consider good.  Lua just has less offensive syntax than most of the others and was intentionally kept simple as it is engineered from day one for being used as an embedded language (very few scripting languages are).

 

57 minutes ago, angelhdz12 said:

I dream about Python replacing Javascript for the web.

I'll grant that this would be an improvement; we would be going from horrible to just really bad.

 

18 minutes ago, ehigiepaul said:

If Serif team choose any other language i will just have to learn it to build my automation or plugin.

Agreed.  In the end it would be what would be available.  The only other option would be the kludge that web developers are starting to use: compilers that translate one scripting language into another.