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Comment on "Mike Lee on Cocoa"
by Blain — Nov 08
Agreed on NSTreeController, and while Core Data has its fair share of land mines, it's still very usable for a good deal. Of course, when it comes to multithreading, I fall back onto NSDicts in NSDicts to avoid headaches.

I haven't played with Calendar Store or scripting bridge much, but I think scripting bridge is less of an issue than why it's not really usable: It's still not easy to make an app Applescriptable.

To make a bog-standard cocoa app, a lot of the linking and setup is drag and drop and control-drag in IB. To set the info.plist, you can use the get info command in xCode. The old adage of making a usable app with almost no coding applies, even moreso with core data.

To make it applescriptable, the first step is to make some files that aren't in the "New File" template list, and then hand-type in xml, making sure it's right and with almost no error checking. When even Hillegass says, "Before you begin, you should recognize that the AppleScript system is rather finicky. Your plists must be carefully created, or nothing works." (Second edition, p390) you know that there's tools missing and something's wrong. And it's not like Applescript is a brand new API.

I've got a feeling that the scripting bridge would be magically fixed were it easier to make apps scriptable.

* I should disclaimer that I don't have the 10.5 API in front of me right now, but the online docs make no hint of anything that doesn't sound like magic incantations.
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