Plea to developers: Make data for all applications available to scripting languages

[J F]

Hi there,
I have been a long time palm treo user and my treo is my invaluable pocket
office for my business. I have used scripting languages on my desktop to do
all sorts of useful manipulation of the data on my treo to help prepare
accounts, publish information on the web etc... I have to make sure that I
use programs that offer a way to get the info out of them on my desktop.
There are a few scripting languages that are available on the treo that can
use the data of selected programs depending on what the developer who ported
the scripting language felt important. This amounts to me not being able to
find solutions to do what I want to do directly on my phone...

What I would like to see is ALL programs having a way of getting at their
data from a scripting language. I don't know if it makes sense to have some
guidelines for developers to make it easier for this information to be got
at. This would be for someone more competent than me to suggest.

I imagine it would be easier if there was a decision on a default scripting
language but with so many to choose from I don't quite see that happening...
(my vote goes with python even though it's by no means my favourite language
but considering the amount of libraries, simplicity, documentation, user
base, strong position in the open source community and the success of python
on Nokia series 60 phones it would be a good idea.)

As a little postscript I would also like to make a plea for making any
scripting bindings as simple and easy to use as possible. I feel that things
like being able to run your own scripts on a phone is what will make it
possible for ordinary non-1337 folk to appreciate what freedom means.

Thanks for listening,
James