Re:ViTunes
by _delirium on Tuesday August 02, 2011 @09:38AM
(#2837050)
Interesting; I didn't realize it was possible to control iTunes from alternate frontends via some sort of API. Instead of a new console-mode frontend, though, I wonder if it'd be possible to adopt player frontends from other client/server music players, like the ncurses-based 'ncmpc' frontend of mpd.
[ Parent
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iTunes can be controlled via AppleScript. This plugin appears to talk to iTunes via a CLI the author wrote in Objective-C which uses Scripting Bridge to talk to iTunes. Scripting Bridge is a cocoa interface to scriptable applications.
Many OS X applications expose part or all of their functionality via AppleScript. To get some idea of what an application offers you can fire up AppleScript Editor, then open the dictionary for a given application. (Rarely, an application will expose more than is shown in its dictionary.)
Now, AppleScript is a truly detestable language, so avoid using it directly at all costs. :-) http://appscript.sourceforge.net/ is much more friendly.
Re:ViTunes
by telemachos on Tuesday August 02, 2011 @09:46AM
(#2837075)
My first thought was the other way around: How much would I need to do to make ViTunes control my mpd music? (There seem to be a couple of older Python Vim plugins to do this[1][2].)
Re:ViTunes
by JoelMcCracken on Tuesday August 02, 2011 @10:16AM
(#2837164)
I haven't looked into ViTunes, but most Apple applications are very able to be scripted via AppleScript. If I had to guess, I would think that this is how this is being accomplished.