| ACScript Interface | |
| Introduction |
2006-02-01 |
This document is an introduction to the ACScript-Interface and it's purpose.
ACScript is the abbreviation for Application Control Script and it has been developed to provide a simple scripting language that can be embedded in other applications and can be extended by these applications with further commands.
An application control script file is actually a simple ASCII file containing several commands for a lot of different actions from running programs to sending E-Mail and read/write files.
ACScript itself is only a module (wmACScr1.dll) and the processing of a script file has to be triggered by another application. The other application starting the script interpretation can add enhancements (further commands and variables in particular) when interpreting the script. Therefore it is important which application interprets the particular script because of the possibly used enhancements and so each application implementing the application script module should define another extension to provide easy distinguishing which script file uses what language extensions.
The SiBaLa (Simple Batch Language) application interprets plain application script without any further enhancements to the application script module. It's purpose is to provide access to a more featured simple batch language.
On a machine where you want to process application control scripts you need a Win2000/XP/2003 OS and SiBaLa or ColdRED.
Nudger 3 was the first application where MAY Computer has implemented one more scripting language (in addition to VB scripting possibility) to enable people who are not very familiar with programming languages like VB etc. for creating specific processes.
But as time goes by we are developing other applications which should be very flexible so providing the functionality of some applications as script language enhancements might be a good additional feature or - in some cases - generally a better choice than developing a complex (but still more limited) configuration program.
The purpose for the user is that he/she can create small scripts with less required knowledge of how to write programs.
The purpose for the developer is that he/she can focus on the specific commands needed for the specific purposes. A large set of common commands and structures is available automatically and any enhancements done to the application control script module are available immediately within all applications that use the module.
Application control scripts can be very simple and even very complex according to the things that should be done. Simple application control scripts contain simply a list of commands to execute but as it supports subroutines as well as conditional processings (IF) it can look similar to a VB script. A simple sample is given here:
GETFILENAMEONLY "DestFName", "%GLB.FullName%"
SETVAR "Destination", "F:\Post\Temp\%SCR.DestFName%.tif"
EXECSHELL """F:\WORK\Diverse\DDEExec\DDEExec.exe"" SOURCE=""%GLB.FullName%"" DESTINATION=""%SCR.Destination%"" FILE=""F:\WORK\Diverse\DDEExec\ConvertUGIIPlot2tiff.dde""",,1,1
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