[Cialug] Windows Scripting

[Matthew Nuzum]

On Tue, 2007-01-30 at 12:29 -0600, Todd Walton wrote:
> I'm looking at a couple of Microsoft Press books on Windows scripting.
>  From the introductions of each:

> To be fair I'll mention two things I like about Windows scripting that
> I haven't yet found on Linux.  Both are file formats:
> 
> 1) Windows Script File, .wsf
> 
> It's a script (anything that the Windows Script Host will support,
> which is VBScript, JScript, Perl, etc.) wrapped in an XML file.  

> 2) HTML Application, .hta
> 
> This is da bomb.  HTA files are scripts wrapped in HTML.  
> ... What you get, in effect, is a script
> with a graphical user interface.  ... I'm not sure how
> I'd do the equivalent on Linux, without actually running a web server.

Yeah, I've used windows scripting too, it is quite convenient. But at
the same time, it's very easy to do things that are very insecure. I
once wrote a script for doing batch conversion of images. A few weeks
later, the "I love you" virus came out that used many of the same
techniques (and, ironically, completely ruined the many gigs of images
I'd converted previously).

I've noticed that in recent years, especially since Windows XP, security
has become a big deal and has therefore taken a lot of the simplicity
out of writing scripts for Windows.

On Linux, have you see the various "dialog" tools?

And, regarding the HTML interface, have you played with GWT (Google Web
Toolkit)? It lets you easily create java based web applications, but
when you debug the apps, instead of launching in a web-browser, it
launches them in a self contained application window. I can't help but
wonder if there will be a way to deploy apps like that. That would be
cool.

I think it's ironic that Microsoft came out with PowerShell or Monad or
Gonad or whatever it's called. It really borrows from the strengths of
Unix shells and gives Windows a very useful shell and scripting
environment. Wikipedia says that with exchange 2007, all administration
is done via command line (using monad) and the guis simply execute the
command line programs. How original!

-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode