What's the Best Way to Handle Scripting Under XP?

ChrisZermatt asks: "I've got to build a custom workflow for a customer that has a photography business. His photographers take hundreds of thousands of photos a year, and since he's recently moved entirely to digital, he wants to automate a lot of his current processes. Ideally I'd be able to plonk a recent Mac running Tiger into his shop, and use a combination of AppleScript, iView Pro, Photoshop and an FTP program to handle all his needs. Sadly, he insists on using *cheap* PC's running Windows, so a Mac isn't an option for this project. So, what should I use on the Windows side of things to build a custom workflow?" "iView lets you control the program using VBS or Javascript, but they don't really offer much in the way of advice on building a Windows workflow. I need to be able to copy/move a ton of files around and link the above mentioned programs. I'd really rather *not* spend money on something like VisualBasic. What are the alternatives for scripting on Windows?"

Comments

MacroExpress

[SporkLand]

I have found Macro Express(http://www.macros.com/) to be the best way to script things under Windows. It lets you quickly write scripts that interact with various programs in the system to get useful things done. It even lets you get down to the level of sending messages to a Window's message handler, although I've never needed anything that complicated.

It's only downside is that it is a bit timing sensitive, and is pseudo difficult to get synchronized with the programs it is interacting with in the absence of pop-up dialog boxes. I usually end-up throwing it into some busy-wait state where it checks to see if a specific sign of a tasks completion is in existence or not.

The cool thing about it, is after the "customers" see what it can do, they tend to start working with it and even further automate their own workflow.