Been reading up on REALbasic using the first version of the O'Reilly title about the language, and have reintroduced myself to Applescript. The only real use I've had for Applescript so far is a quick hack to turn resource fork (the part of a Mac file that tells the OS which application should open it) into a CodeWarrior file so that I could edit files in CodeWarrior 5 made on, say, a Windows machine.

Turns out Applescript -- and I'm sorry this is so obvious to real Mac fanatics -- fits the "same evolutionary niche" as vbscript and vba in the Windows world. Though it's not quite as robust as COM automated apps imo, you can make most any Apple app that's Applescript compatible do whatever you want with Applescripting. So in my case, I should be able to create filters for Mail.app based on the contents of filters in The Digest Handler by automating Mail.app with Applescript the same way I can automate Outlook with Visual Basic.

The link with REALbasic is that RB has built in support for Applescript, and they interface relatively easily from what I can tell. You lose the ability to use the same syntax -- which you don't in Windowsland, where vbscript and Visual Basic 6 are kissing cousins, and VB.NET is a decent copycat. But you can do the same stuff.

Anyhow, what prompted the blog is that I've signed up for the Applescript listserv with The Digest Handler and ran across this post today, which I though was both uneducated and shortsighted (rude enough?):

>This might be a good time to point out one of MacScripter.net's
>recently added sections.
>
>

... which shows at a glance that Netscape mail is as immune to Apple
Events as it ever has been. I had a look at Mozilla Thunderbird the
other day and was getting slightly interested when I realised it had
no dictionary at all. Straight to the trash with all the other
Mozilla nonsense. One day someone's going to explain to me what the
point of Mozilla is.

*sigh* Hey folks, Applescript is cool, but it's not the be-all-end-all.