21.5. Other Scripting Technologies

The purpose of supporting scripting is to allow users of your program to control and automate it in ways you did not anticipate. You can do this via AppleScript, but there are a number of other scripting languages and systems available from third parties that may be more relevant. If your users are likely to be more familiar with a specific language, then you can always embed an interpreter in your program and use this for scripting. If you are writing a tool targeting web designers, for example, then you might consider linking against the WebKit framework and exporting some of your objects to the WebKit JavaScript engine for scripting.

You may even choose to write a domain-specific language, designed specifically for controlling your application. This is a common approach for highly specialized applications, but is less likely to be the right choice for programs intended for general use.