[Pythonmac-SIG] ANN: aeve 0.0.3 - Pythonic Apple Event Support

[Bob Ippolito]

For those of you that like yourselves too much to attempt 
gensuitemodule, I've been working on a replacement that's a few orders 
of magnitude easier to use.  Basically, this lets Python do most things 
you could do from Script Editor in a very dynamic way.

You can fetch it at (you need this for the examples / scripts at the 
moment):
http://undefined.org/python/aeve-0.0.3.tgz

Or install from my PackageManager repository (which will download the 
dependencies):
http://undefined.org/python/pimp/darwin-6.6-Power_Macintosh.plist

Changes from 0.0.2:
aeve is now dependent on the following modules:
	LaunchServices ( http://undefined.org/python/ )
	TECManager ( http://undefined.org/python/ )
	PyObjC ( http://pyobjc.sourceforge.net/ )

the compiler and aeve.talkto will now take just about any identifying 
information for an application, here are some useful examples (using 
iTunes):
	iTunes  				# application name
	com.apple.iTunes 		# bundle identifier, I personally prefer this over 
the application name
	/Applications/iTunes.app	# path name, though there really isn't a need 
to use this anymore
	hook					# creator code

The example scripts have changed slightly to show this new feature

The arguments for the compiler script have changed (now will only take 
debug or verbose as arguments)

I changed a bunch of the logic around internally, but I plan on making 
a rather big change when I get the time so it does more magic with 
AERecords.  This is one of the only weak points of aeve at the moment.

It's a lot more compatible with applications, such as BBEdit and iView 
MediaPro, which did not work previously.

aeve does not require you to spit out a bunch of py files before 
talking to an app, it's as easy as this:

it uses unicode pretty much everywhere, all the time.  it uses 
TECManager to convert all of the text coming in from AppleScript and in 
the terminologies from macroman (or whatever script+language) into 
unicode.  The HTML documentation prints out with this unicode goodness 
as well.

A whole lot of nasty code was rewritten (it doesn't really bear much 
resemblance to gensuitemodule anymore)

import aeve
iTunes = aeve.talkto('com.apple.iTunes')
print iTunes.current_track.name

Of course, for those great applications that have broken aevt 
dictionaries, you can use the compiler to generate .py files, like this:
cd aeve/scripts
./compiler.py com.apple.iTunes

Which will spit out a python package called iTunes, with all of the 
relevant .py files.  It's not quite pretty printed, but it's good 
enough to fix things (for example, adding the undocumented artwork 
element to the track class).

html documentation can be generated in much the same manner, here's an 
example:
http://undefined.org/python/aeve/iTunes_doc/
As you can tell, I was pretty uninspired and copied the look and feel 
of Script Editor's dictionary.  This documentation was spit out with 
the following:
cd aeve/scripts
./aevedoc.py /Applications/iTunes.app

There are currently two example scripts included:
	missingTrackFinder.py - seeks out and destroys file tracks in your 
playlist whose file is missing (there are plenty of status and question 
dialogs, so it's pretty safe)
	spamStatusMessage.py - a little script I've been using to set my iChat 
status message to the number of spams I've filtered _that day_.  I 
changed it so it will look in your default junk mail folder (by 
inspecting your junk mail rule).  I don't think this will work with 
Panther's Mail.app, but it does work with Jaguar's.

If you get a chance to play with aeve, I'm looking for feedback/bug 
reports - especially from those of you that have used or are using 
gensuitemodule, or have never used Apple Events.

-bob
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