Re: Applescript and Flowjo?

From: Adam Treister (adam@treestar.com)
Date: Thu Apr 06 2000 - 19:19:50 EST


----->>> On  6-Apr-2000, Jan Hendrikx wrote:
>   Has anybody succeeded in scripting Flowjo using Applescript?
>   It would be great if that were possible!!
--------------
I know I haven't.

As Adrian noted, FlowJo does support some minimal level of AppleScript, but
doesn't have the object model implementation which is what you'd need to do
anything meaningful.  I did this in an earlier application (FlexiTrace) and
it turned into a huge amount of work to enable obtuse functionality to a
small number of users.  My personal experience with AppleScripts is that
they're really brittle.  If you move something, or want to something
different from the script writers intention, the script gets annoyingly
confused and its much easier to start over than to fix it.   Publish and
Subscribe is an easier addition feature we've considered, but there just
aren't many people who'd take advantage of this if it were included.  (Let
me know if you think otherwise.)

If properly constructed, a workspace in FlowJo is the script of all
analyses and reports in that experiment.  Dropping your new data folder
onto the workspace should perform all the analyses that one might automate
with AppleScript.  We have considered automating it further, but the
logical next step is auto-printing.  In deference to trees, we chose to
stop short of automating the output without making you look at the data.

Someday soon, FlowJo will store its workspace in an XML syntax, which means
that we can utililze generic scripting tools, or you can even hack the
files yourself.  I think this is a better approach than addiing
AppleScript.

Adam


----------------------------------
Adam Treister
Tree Star, Inc.
ph:  650-508-9349
fax:  650-508-9186
www.treestar.com
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