AppleScript

I love O'Reilly & Associates' books, and have a number of them on my bookshelf. They are often the books I turn to first on technical subjects, and /AppleScript: The Definitive Guide/ is no exception in that regard. Matt Neuburg has a relaxed writing style that makes this guide enjoyable to read, insofar as reference books are enjoyable to any degree. He makes a point of going into detail about the quirks of AppleScript (of which there are tons), explaining workarounds when possible, the potential problems these quirks can cause, etc. Neuburg also is not shy about admitting his puzzlement at some of the particularly odd and inexplicable aspects of the AppleScript language.There's a great deal of information on a wide range of topics: the architecture of the language, the mindset you need when coding with AppleScript, how to combine your AppleScripts with other languages (such as Perl), how to use AppleScript studio to create GUI apps, and tons more. /AppleScript: The Definitive Guide/ has an excellent index, and I've yet to encounter a situation when the bit of info I needed couldn't be found quickly in this book.Ultimately, AppleScript books tend to fall into one of two categories. There are those that are primarily aimed at telling you how to automate specific apps (the Finder, for example) and not much else. Such books are unfortunately too common, and many of them are sorely outdated (usually covering not much after Mac OS 9, which is fairly useless now). At the other end of the spectrum are those that aim to teach you the language, its ups and its downs, its godsends and its bizarre oddities. /AppleScript: The Definitive Guide/ falls into the latter category, and this is its strongest feature.As the author points out, AppleScript is a very quirky language, and you never really "learn" all of it, or even the majority of it. There's so many hacks and poorly (or un-) documented applications, it would take a lifetime to truly master every aspect of AppleScript. Fortunately Matt Neuburg has come to the rescue with this excellent reference. It surely deserves a place on the bookshelf of any Mac developer or power user.

AppleScript The Definitive GuideWhat the Book is AboutThis book aims to provide a complete explanatory manual and reference to AppleScript, up to date with Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther).Target AudienceThe introduction states that the book assumes no prior knowledge of AppleScript or of any other programming language. While I agree that no knowledge of AppleScript is required, it's challenging to consider someone with no programming knowledge starting out with this book to use AppleScript as their first programming language. For experienced Applescript users, the book is likely to be an essential reference.What NOT to ExpectPerhaps like many others who had not used AppleScript, I believed it was a simple, English-like language that was very easy to use. I jumped eagerly in at the first chapter, certain that I would soon be told go sit at my Mac and type my first 'Hello World' AppleScript into some application or other.As I read and read chapter after chapter from the sofa, I realized it was not going to be quite so simple in either case.AppleScript, according to the author, has come close to extinction in the past, but is now entering a 'golden age'; it is a technical innovation and a labor saving device for the ordinary Mac user, yet it's not true to say that it's an intuitive language needing no real explanation.What to ExpectIn reading this book, the author's (Matt Neuburg) expertise in AppleScript becomes immediately apparent. So too does his extremely erudite writing style. For example, when I got to the list of 'apothegms' and discovered that this synonym for 'saying' or 'maxim' was dictionary.com's word of the week on June the 9th, 2000, I naturally began to wonder whether he read dictionary.com every week for fun.As it transpires, the author has degrees in ancient Greek and Classical Philology and had a career as an academic classicist before starting a new career in computing. He thinks computer languages are relatively easy. (See http://www.tidbits.com/matt/).The trouble with AppleScript is that to use it you have to use it to script an application, each application has a different vocabulary stored in its dictionary, and dictionaries in general have no manuals of their own. If someone tried to write one book that said precisely how to script every application, it would need to contain a dictionary manual for each application, and would therefore be enormous.While there are books about AppleScript for single applications, Matt Neuburg quite simply wants to get you to see AppleScript through his eyes and learn to use it as he does, finding out what you need to know as you go along.Part 1 - AppleScript Overview starts by identifying when and why you would want to use AppleScript - for example whenever you get bored doing something very repetitive with your computer. Also discussed in this part of the book are the different environments for creating AppleScripts and some of the important concepts and principles.The singular feature of this sectio

I have been a scripter going on 12 years and have written scripts for pretty much every scriptable app. Other than Danny Goodman's book written a long time ago, there has not been reference book that is as thorough and as enjoyable as Applescript: The Definitive Guide. I bought one copy and then bought another so I could have a copy at work and at home.If you are new to scripting and looking for a basic manual or, if like me, you are self-taught and looking to fill in the blanks, this is the book for you. I don't know how Mr. Nueburg has done it, but he has managed to meet the needs of the newbie and the expert. Concepts such as the scoping of handlers, how script objects work, recursion and my personal favorite, lists, are explained in a way that anyone can understand. So many of these types books are written in what I call "high academic" making it nearly impossible for anyone but Ph.D in computer science to understand. This is not one of those books. Even though Matt Nueburg has a long career in the industry, he does not treat AppleScript as if he were writing his thesis on it.It is also Nueburg's credit that he wrote and tested every script in the book which are also very easy to understand. I've seen too many AppleScript examples that read as if they were prepared by an Assembly Language programmer rather than playing to what is supposed to be one of AppleScripts strengths-readability. Nueburg writes clearly, concisely and with a sense of humor and never taken himself or his subject matter too seriously. I mean how many reference books have you read that make you laugh out loud? I can't think of any. I just can't say enough about how excited I am to finally have this book. It is terrific and I recommend it highly.

Apple has long pushed AppleScript as an easy-to-learn, English-like way of automating repetitive tasks on a Mac. Alas, I and many, many others have discovered from painful experience that AppleScript is hugely difficult to approach -- its learning curve never seems to flatten out. Even after writing thousands of lines of code in several programs that (eventually) worked, I still feel I'm groping in the dark every time I try something new. I've read other books on AppleScript, looking for one that would open the magic door and reveal the simple, friendly AppleScript that's supposed to exist.Matt Neuburg has given us the first AppleScript book that tells the deep truth: AppleScript is a quirky, inconsistent programming language that is not only hard to learn, but hard to learn for fundamental, structural reasons. Neuburg exposes the unavoidable difficulties that are built into AppleScript's design, and then shows us practical techniques for accomodating to them and using them.Anyone who reads this book carefully will be able to apply AppleScript with greater understanding and less wasted time, and be able to use it with far less of the disappointment, frustration, and even rage felt by all too many people who collide unprepared with AppleScript's tricks and traps.Since there's no "look inside the book" feature, let me summarize the main sections. Part I explores AppleScript in a system context: what it is meant to do; how it is used (with an intro to the Script Editor); and what its basic concepts are. (Contra another reviewer, this 90pp part contains nothing about history; it's all current and relevant stuff, needed later in the book.)Central to Part I is Chapter 3, "The AppleScript Experience," which describes the actual process of building a program. This chapter so perfectly reflected the confusions, frustrations, and dead-ends that I've experienced with AppleScript that I was sold: this guy really understands the problems! He doesn't minimize them or blame them on me. Maybe he can show me ways to work around them, but whether he does or not, at least he'd validated them.Part II, 200pp, is a detailed and insightful exposition of the AppleScript language. Early in this part is a discussion of "The 'English-Likeness' Monster," showing how the attempt to be friendly distorts the language and confuses users. Then Neuburg examines every detail of AppleScript's syntax and semantics. He doesn't do this like a typical "tech writer," rephrasing the official documentation. He has taken the time to write code to test out every corner case and exception of the language, and he lays them all bare. He looks into AppleScript's baroque scoping rules and its inconsistent rules for implicit coercion of types.All of Part II is meat and drink to a fan of programming languages, and I read it through like a good novel. More to the point, it's a deep and thorough job of documenting the actuality of AppleScript: what syntax works, what the tricks and traps are, and w

This is an excellent book by a gifted writer. Neuburg has the ability to understand AppleScript at a deep level, and then communicate that understanding clearly and coherently. The coherence of his approach brings the novice along with the text while keeping the expert engaged by virtue of passing on little known facts, strategies for dealing with Applescript's eccentricities and frustrations, and amusing and important asides. One chapter that struck me as indicative of Neuburg's strengths comes early in the text and deals with a real life scripting challenge that he had to meet in the course of producing the book. Beginning very simply he shows the reader how he worked through the process of making a script that would interact with the program FrameMaker: gathering information about the book's illustrations, listing the illustrations in a very particular order and renaming all the illustration files in a way that was mandated by the publisher. We readers can observe the habits of thought, learn some of the peculiarities of AppleScript, and follow the methodology of an experienced scripter as Neuburg works through this process of learning how to speak to FrameMaker to achieve the result he needs. By the end we are looking at, and understanding, a complicated and effective script. The subsequent chapters that deal with the building blocks of AppleScript and the ways to combine them into increasingly powerful tools are written clearly and with a good humor and comraderie that make learning about AppleScript quite enjoyable for this reader. I highly recommend this book.