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AppleScript was not alone
Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 9:34 AM by Dave Winer.
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  • John Gruber has a piece in MacWorld about AppleScript in which he says that Open Scripting Architecture was supported only by Apple. That's not correct.
    • AppleScript was not originally intended to be the only OSA scripting language, but it was. The idea was that OSA was language-agnostic, and the plan was for there to be several of them eventually. AppleScript was the friendly language, derived from HyperCard's HyperTalk (therein another story entirely) and intended for use by non-programmers. The theory being that a programming language that looked like prose rather than code might enable a broad swath of 'non-programmers' to, well, program.
  • UserLand's Frontier scripting environment supported OSA, both as a client and a server. The syntax of our language, known as UserTalk, is most like Python -- though it is a contemporary of Python, development started in 1988.
  • The OSA compatibility and the struggle with Apple to allow us to co-exist with AppleScript is well documented in the archive of Scripting News.
    • Working With AppleScript: Shows how to run AppleScript code inside the Frontier environment.
    • UserTalk Everywhere: Frontier implements the Open Scripting Architecture, making it easy for scripting clients to hook up to the Frontier system.
    • A Google search for "AppleScript" on scripting.com.
  • Update: There's a JavaScript OSA component too.