Hi,

> Being new to the mac world, I'm surprised that OSA (specifically
> javascript osa) hasn't had a HUGE impact. I'd much rather script to
> javascript than applescript.

That's probably a subject for an entire book. The OSA (Open Scripting
Architecture) predates Windows Scripting Host and was a very good idea,
though in typical Apple style of the time, over engineered.

There was at one time an effort to make Windows and the Mac OS share the OSA
standard (see OpenDoc), but that broke down for lots of reasons and MS went
their own way with Windows Scripting Host.

In the Classic Mac OS days, the OSA runtime environment imposed memory
management restrictions that made it almost impossible to host Unix derived
scripting languages so JS, Perl, Ruby, Python where never ported. These
restrictions have largely been removed under Mac OS X. However, the total
lack of documentation and the complexity of creating an OSA version of any
scripting language has prevented many other languages from being implemented
- though there have been attempts.

As for why JSOSA didn't take off there are probably lots of reasons:

- AppleScript is good enough for most folks
- users must install JSOSA before they can run scripts while AppleScript is
bundled with the OS
- Apple's less than whole hearted support for OSA (e.g. Apple's Script
Editor gets a little unstable when using anything other than AppleScript,
AppleScript Studio is AppleScript centric when it could/should be OSA
centric)
- my support/promotion of JSOSA has not been successful
- my unwillingness to make JSOSA Open Source
- more attractive alternatives (AppleEvent hooks for Perl, Python and Ruby)

> Now, if there was only a Core.ConsoleOutput("") for running a script
> in terminal, rather than echo'ing... (hint hint) :)

I've filed a bug here, and I'll get it resolved in the next maintenance
release.

Cheers
-Mark

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