I’m considering venturing into action writing for the first time for
what may very well be an overly ambitious project for me (action-
wise), I’m not sure yet being as I’m new to this so I’m doing a little
research first. As such I’ve downloaded the Action writing pdf which
appears to refer to FW v3. Is this the most current info or should I
be looking somewhere else?
Thanks,
Todd
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I believe that all the most recent (all not exactly recent) reference materials are here: http://www.actionsforge.com/wikis/view/12-actions-api
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Cool. Thanks Chuck, I completely missed that.
Todd
On May 11, 2011, at 3:43 PM, chuckamuck wrote:
I believe that all the most recent (all not exactly recent)
reference materials are here: http://www.actionsforge.com/wikis/view/12-actions-api
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The materials on the Wiki are not complete, but in some places are
much newer than what is available in PDF. Be sure to find all the Tech
Notes on Softpress’s site and download those as well. They are the
newest bits of (PDF) documentation to trickle out, even though they
are themselves quite old. Documentation always gets the short stick,
as you know.
Walter
On May 11, 2011, at 4:34 PM, Todd wrote:
I’m considering venturing into action writing for the first time for
what may very well be an overly ambitious project for me (action-
wise), I’m not sure yet being as I’m new to this so I’m doing a
little research first. As such I’ve downloaded the Action writing
pdf which appears to refer to FW v3. Is this the most current info
or should I be looking somewhere else?Thanks,
Todd
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Thanks Walter, got all (18!) of them. Phew.
Todd
Be sure to find all the Tech Notes on Softpress’s site and download
those as well.
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Don’t forget you can ask any questions here, too.
On 11 May 2011, at 22:19, Walter Davis wrote:
The materials on the Wiki are not complete, but in some places are much newer than what is available in PDF. Be sure to find all the Tech Notes on Softpress’s site and download those as well. They are the newest bits of (PDF) documentation to trickle out, even though they are themselves quite old. Documentation always gets the short stick, as you know.
Walter
On May 11, 2011, at 4:34 PM, Todd wrote:
I’m considering venturing into action writing for the first time for what may very well be an overly ambitious project for me (action-wise), I’m not sure yet being as I’m new to this so I’m doing a little research first. As such I’ve downloaded the Action writing pdf which appears to refer to FW v3. Is this the most current info or should I be looking somewhere else?
Thanks,
Todd
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Also, all of my Actions[1] are unencrypted and available for study, as
are many others (especially inside the Freeway Pro bundle). This is
often the best way to figure out how to do something – look how
someone else did it.
Walter
On May 11, 2011, at 5:33 PM, Joe Billings wrote:
Don’t forget you can ask any questions here, too.
On 11 May 2011, at 22:19, Walter Davis wrote:
The materials on the Wiki are not complete, but in some places are
much newer than what is available in PDF. Be sure to find all the
Tech Notes on Softpress’s site and download those as well. They are
the newest bits of (PDF) documentation to trickle out, even though
they are themselves quite old. Documentation always gets the short
stick, as you know.Walter
On May 11, 2011, at 4:34 PM, Todd wrote:
I’m considering venturing into action writing for the first time
for what may very well be an overly ambitious project for me
(action-wise), I’m not sure yet being as I’m new to this so I’m
doing a little research first. As such I’ve downloaded the Action
writing pdf which appears to refer to FW v3. Is this the most
current info or should I be looking somewhere else?Thanks,
Todd
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Except FreeCounter, which is encoded so that Express can load it.
I’ll send you the raw Action if you’re curious.
That would be helpful, thanks. It does help me when I have something
to dissect.
Todd
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…but please refrain from swearing.
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Hi Todd,
All of my non-commercial Actions are unencoded and (as previously mentioned) I’d strongly encourage you to download any or all that you can and start to dissect them bit by bit. A lot of my older Actions should be very easy to follow and can be quite linear when running (I put this down to my self taught naive coding style) so should be very easy to pick up and start working with.
The other thing to mention is that I think I’ve only ever written 5 or 6 Actions from the ground up. The vast majority of my Actions start with a framework Action that I copy to get me started quickly. You’ll soon build up a library of useful functions and Action code that you’ll end up slotting together to make your Actions in the future.
Lastly, ask questions here as we’re all in the same boat (and speaking of myself, quite nosey too!). 
Regards,
Tim.
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Thanks Tim and everyone else who responded. Dissecting an action (or
12) seems to be the way to start. A fundamental question I have is if
the action is meant to integrate the functionality of a 3rd Party app
with FW then do I need to get the API for that application?
Todd
On May 12, 2011, at 3:47 AM, Tim Plumb wrote:
All of my non-commercial Actions are unencoded and (as previously
mentioned) I’d strongly encourage you to download any or all that
you can and start to dissect them bit by bit.
Lastly, ask questions here as we’re all in the same boat (and
speaking of myself, quite nosey too!).
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Depends a lot on the application, and what output from that
application you are integrating. If it is text-based, like say
CSSEdit, then no, there’s probably no API to speak of. Without tipping
your hand (if this is to be a commercial offering) what sort of
integration are you imagining here, and with what?
Walter
On May 12, 2011, at 8:53 AM, Todd wrote:
Thanks Tim and everyone else who responded. Dissecting an action (or
12) seems to be the way to start. A fundamental question I have is
if the action is meant to integrate the functionality of a 3rd Party
app with FW then do I need to get the API for that application?Todd
On May 12, 2011, at 3:47 AM, Tim Plumb wrote:
All of my non-commercial Actions are unencoded and (as previously
mentioned) I’d strongly encourage you to download any or all that
you can and start to dissect them bit by bit.
Lastly, ask questions here as we’re all in the same boat (and
speaking of myself, quite nosey too!).
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The intent is to make it a commercial action so I’m unsure as to how
to explain what it is I’m attempting without giving away the farm.
I’ll have to give it some thought and post back.
Thanks,
Todd
On May 12, 2011, at 8:00 AM, Walter Davis wrote:
Without tipping your hand (if this is to be a commercial offering)
what sort of integration are you imagining here, and with what?
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I think you’ll find we’re a fairly non-competitive bunch within our
little “club”. It is a public list, though, so no claims about Adobe
not squatting on your turf. I think that if you claim your Action,
many of us (myself, certainly, since I make a point of not charging
for Actions) will help without infringing on your future sales. For
example, Max has posted countless questions on this list that end up
in his WebYep Actions. We don’t begrudge him his sales, because he
does a yeoman effort, particularly on the documentation and after-
sales support, that I certainly don’t plan to undertake myself.
If I were to make a commercial Action, it would probably work like
this: the Action is free and open-source, but it connects to a Web
service that I control and can charge for on a recurring basis. So you
do your one month free trial, then get hooked, and then your credit
card is charged $XX each month to continue using my crack-level-
addictive service. The Action is the handle, the service is the razor
blade.
Walter
On May 12, 2011, at 9:07 AM, Todd wrote:
The intent is to make it a commercial action so I’m unsure as to how
to explain what it is I’m attempting without giving away the farm.
I’ll have to give it some thought and post back.Thanks,
Todd
On May 12, 2011, at 8:00 AM, Walter Davis wrote:
Without tipping your hand (if this is to be a commercial offering)
what sort of integration are you imagining here, and with what?
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…so no claims about Adobe not squatting on your turf.
HA! as if…
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Hi Todd,
Without knowing what the application is and what sort of information you want to transfer between the app and your Action it is hard to really say. Having said that you can control any scriptable application directly from your Action using the OSA functions in the Actions API. The user will need to enable the Action to do this (the setting is off by default) but the integration should be seamless and only limited to your embedded script.
If you want to add functionality from an application and you can’t script it then you may have to look at replicating this yourself from within the Action. This assumes that what the app is doing is remotely possible from within an Action and that you’ve enough time, energy and resources to plough into it. Having the functionality core to the Action could make it less prone to user related problems.
If you just want to deal with the output from another application (a css or html file for example) then you may need to do a bit of data mining and dig around in the file until you’ve got all of the information you need. Again the Actions API has a few handy features allowing you to directly read and write to external files.
Think about a question you could ask that gives you as much information as you think you need while retaining your hold on the specifics.
Regards,
Tim.
On 12 May 2011, at 13:53, Todd wrote:
A fundamental question I have is if the action is meant to integrate the functionality of a 3rd Party app with FW then do I need to get the API for that application?
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Hi todd
These are my thoughts and advise… so ignore them if you wish :o)
As you know I do have one commercial action and the rest are… well just fun or things which I thought might be useful when I have been working. For example the script maker and linker. Other’s like the Advance Style Mover was a natural progression on the actions I had dissected and added to, to accomplish specific problems I need to address within a project. Where I can I have left them unencoded.
As Tim and Walter have indicated the webyep action set, would not exist if it haven’t been for Walter Joe Tim and Weaver in fact there are great lumps of code that Tim, Walter and Weaver have written in answering to a problem on which I just couldn’t work out how to do, and unselfishly they have jumped straight in and offered solutions or written working models. Everyone in the action writing club are probably the easiest and unselfish bunch of developers I have worked with and so when ever I can I chip in to other people questions.
If you do plan to write a commercial plugin then be prepared to do a shed load of answering emails and helping out. I do it without question as I feel if people are paying me for something then its only right that I support that actions as much as possible.
This sounds good in theory but here are the things you need to put in place otherwise you are going to get really disillusioned.
Things you need to think about:
I hope this helps when it comes to thinking about the other aspects of writing a commercial action, as I know these other areas sometimes… can be forgotten.
All the best and if you need anything let me know
All the best max
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Hi Max,
All good points, many of which I’ve already been considering. As
daunting as the process of writing actions seems to me I often think
all the other “after” aspects are even more so, ie, support, docs,
updating etc. I’m frequently in awe of the sheer amount of time and
effort you guys must certainly invest in your actions/support/docs and
I think if I were attempting something much simpler I might be quicker
to jump in.
The reason I’m considering this at all is because, like many of you,
I’m sure, I’ve been repeatedly contacted by several FW users to write
specific actions which is amazing to me because they know I’m not an
action writer. And while I believe it would be very well-received by
the FW community, not to mention an interesting project for me, I
think it might be more of an investment than I’m ready to make with
regard to time and developing my action skills. I’ve taken great
interest in Ruby/Rails and also mobile app development, the latter of
which I’ve been tinkering with on the side for some time now with
little to show for it (talk about time consuming), and I think my time
might be better spent in those areas. Besides, I’m not sure my noggin’
can cope with trying to learn another development process at the
moment. It already feels like my brain is leaking out of my ears some
days.
I admit the current restrictions imposed by the action API does give
me added pause but I’m still mulling things over thanks to the great
feedback from the action writers and people on FWTalk (you know who
you are). I greatly appreciate everyone’s input.
Thank you,
Todd
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