[Pythonmac-SIG] Python/appscript ready for primetime?

[Michael Glassford]

Karl Sweitzer wrote:
> Is Python's appscript suitable and sufficiently mature for deployment  
> in a commercial application?
> 
> With the demise of VBA in Microsoft Office, we are faced with  
> transitioning scripts that manipulate equations in Office and manage  
> the interoperation of our application with Office. AppleScript is an  
> obvious candidate, but coyote ugly in the eyes of many developers,  
> including us. We are looking for viable alternatives.
> 
> Python, augmented by appscript to access the Word Object Model, is  
> the best candidate we've identified thus far. However, we have  
> negligible experience with Python and zero experience with appscript.  
> Further, we note that appscript has not reached version 1.0.

It has been around for quite some time, however.

> Has anybody out there used Python and appscript for a commercial  
> product? 

The Mac version of Goombah (www.goombah.com) uses it.

> Does it deserve active consideration? 

Yes, you should consider it, although only you can determine if it will 
ultimately work for you. The greatest difficulty we had is that, at 
times translating AppleScript commands to appscript commands is tricky 
and there are not a lot of examples available, but we always got it 
working in the end.

> Are there other  
> candidates we should be considering?

Not in Python, that I'm aware of. I believe there are somewhat similar 
libraries for Ruby and Perl, though I have no experience with either.

> If you have an opinion--or better yet, experience in this area--we'd  
> like to hear from you.
> 
> Thanks.

You're welcome.

Mike