Web automation

[qwweeeit at yahoo.it]

Hi all,
answering to Mike Meyer who replied to the following
assertion on my part:
 >> but I supposed the everyone knew that web automation
 >> (and in general  "automation") is only a problem in Linux.
with...:
> I don't know it. I don't believe it, either. I automate web tasks on
> Unix systems (I don't use many Linux systems, but it's the same tool
>  set) on a regular basis. In fact, I automate *lots* of tasks on Unix

Perhaps there is a misunderstanding: I intend not the
script (like bash) automation, but the user emulation on the GUI side,
which allows automation by programmatically emulating a lot of repetive
user tasks.
A perfect example is referred in another of my posts:
"web automation with twill"
(http://groups.google.it/group/comp.lang.python/browse_frm/thread/23b50b2c5f2ef377/f7faa139993bda79?q=qwweeeit&rnum=3#f7faa139993bda79)
in which from a program (twill) I "press" 220 times a button on a
asp file (or better, on the html reply of the html server) to get all
the data.
But if the html server only enables the access from a browser, I am
obliged to cheat and disguise twill as a browser.
In Windows you can use a macro language as AutoIt.
In Linux instead, and more generally in Unix, the pre-X is
quite automatable, but (as Mike Meyer said)...
> It's only when you restrict the meaning of "automation" to be
> "driving a GUI  app" that you run into problems.
By the way you already took part in a discussion on sending keystrokes
to a GUI application, "fake" flags and low-level programming
(you proposed python-xlib to avoid indeed low-level programming).
But in that I disagree with you. For me it's better to spend my time
in strenghtening security (firewalls, antivirus etc...) and then choose

among the various solutions in Windows as far as macro languages are
concerned (very likely I will choose Autot).
And I can keep on using Python if I want...

The contribution of Paul Boddie is valuable. I too examined DCOP
and even chose as browser Konqueror, being a KDE application.
But DCOP doesn't go to such a low level. It is not possible
to send a simulated keystroke from one KDE application to another.

Not being an expert I can't understand nor comment on the more
technical parts of your reply (out-of-process automation,
PyXML-style DOM etc.).

Nevertheless I thank you all for your contribution.

Bye.