Slashdot Mirror
Teach Yourself AppleScript in 24 Hours
Teach Yourself Applescript in 24 Hours (TYA) from Sams Publishing is certainly up to date: it covers Applescript under OS 10.2 and the use of AppleScript Studio to build GUI applications using the language. That's its strength. The book's first weakness, though, is that it starts too far down the learning curve in my opinion. The first few chapters of TYA could be read by someone almost totally new to the Macintosh -- they cover such basics as running the scripts installed with the OS and getting new scripts from Apple and installing them. At the same time, they introduce basic AppleScript programming terminology not really required for these sorts of tasks such as suites, classes and commands. This material would have best waited a few chapters. It is not really until 'Hour 6', most of the way through the first part of the book, that it really sorts itself out and gets down to really teaching you AppleScript.
The Basics The book is divided into four parts: 'Getting Started With AppleScript,' which covers using scripts and basic programming concepts; 'Writing Scripts With Script Editor,' which takes you through using the Script Editor, details AppleScript syntax and how to script the Finder and various applications and using AppleScript Dictionaries; 'Working With AppleScript Studio,' which covers building AppleScript-based GUI applications using Project Builder and Interface Builder all the way through to complex applications that can store and retrieve documents; and a final section 'Advanced Scripting,' which covers Script Objects, scripting across a network (including SOAP and XML-RPC), and integrating scripts with the terminal and cron.
Each section is then divided up into chapters designed to be worked through in less than an hour ,with a small number of short exercises at the end. I found that most chapters took me about half an hour before I reached the exercises, which then took ten to fifteen minutes.
As you can see, almost everything you could ask for is touched on in this book. Once over the introductory chapters, I found the book to be well laid out, well structured and well written. I particularly liked Part III on AppleScript Studio; it started easily and worked up to quite an advanced little application explaining everything well along the way.
The Bad There are some things missing, however. Debugging is hardly mentioned (3/4 of one lesson), and debugging is not exactly trivial in AppleScript. I also found no mention of my pet demon with AppleScript; its incredibly strong typing and problems with having data in the wrong type; this is a classic problem with files and file names. In reality, this book teaches you the language without really getting down to teach you how to program in the language. A fine distinction, I know, but after just reading Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules, I found TYA to be light on real examples and real world code. Even the best section, the one on AppleScript Studio, didn't touch on many things you will need to know.
Sams have a page devoted to the book at the Sams web site, but frankly the URL is so long and cumbersome I don't dare risk putting it in a post. Go to the site and type 'AppleScript' in the search box. It has the table of contents and a sample chapter and some of the code from the book. The sample chapter is the third chapter 'Running The Scripts You Already Have' and really doesn't give you a good feel for how the book teaches you AppleScript programming. The page to download the code examples says "All the code developed for the book in one convenient download," but in fact all you get are the AppleScript Studio projects and source from four of the chapters. Oh, and the introduction says "There are even a few goodies on the web site that aren't in the book" -- they sure must be good as I couldn't find them.
In conclusion, I think this book starts too far down the learning curve and leaves off too early, with not enough detail. It seems a shame, what we have here is well laid out and well written, I wanted it to be better after I had finished. This book might suit someone absolutely new to the Mac who wanted to learn enough AppleScript to perform a few basic operations, for everyone else it'll be better to wait till October when AppleScript 1-2-3 will be out from Peachpit and AppleScript: The Definitive Guide will be out from O'Reilly, and we might have a better option. If you absolutely need to get some help with AppleScript Studio then borrow someone else's copy or find one second hand.
You can purchase Teach Yourself AppleScript in 24 Hours from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Forget VBscript in 5 minutes.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
Along with Mars day or what?
For those with AppleScript Studio and the Developers Tools installed, head on over to this path for all kinds of cool info: /Developer/Documentation/CoreTechnologies/AppleScr iptStudio/
There's also online resources, naturally: Apple's AppleScript site, AppleScript Studio Essentials docs, the AppleScript Studio mailing list, and lots of other stuff.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
Now post another kde vs gnome flamewar.
The problem with this and all other 'in 24 hours' is that they don't come with the 24 pack of red bull needed to keep reading the bastard for a full day. And of course in the morning you'll have forgoten everything but the title of the book.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
It adds a whole new dimension of customizability to Mac OS X; now you can script your Mac to the same level you can script Linux/*BSD/Unix. =)
"debugging is not exactly trivial in AppleScript"
/me waits for Mac zealots to moderate this as a troll...
No, it is not. I've dabbled in two dozen programming languages, and Applescript is the one I've hated the most. It tries to be normal English but because of its strong typing you have to write the sentences exactly correct, which is annoying and hard to figure out once you get past the simplistic 'hello world' stage.
The way you need to string the words together is not obvious, and is sometimes not even proper English. I really wish Apple would wise up and drop it in favour for something more intuitive on the advanced level, like javascript or python.
Most Mac users I know don't know or do anything with AppleScript, so I don't think it's a mistake to start where it does. I have the old O'Reilly book which is still great as a quick reference, but I'll have to see this one for myself before recommending it to people. IMO, a lot of people who could really benefit from using AppleScript daily aren't because they feel it's too techy for them. Maybe this book is what those people need. On the other hand, I haven't heard anything about 1-2-3, but I've had good experience with a few of Peachpit's books.
Alex.
Why applescript? That's because mac applications can include "dictionaries" of commands that applescript can use. Try scripting photoshop and filemaker in python or some other language.
That's applescript's true power really. If it was just used as a standalone language without outside application support, it would be fairly weak.
First is that Applescript is great for automating Applescript-aware applications (including Finder) without having to either brute-force it, or write whatever function you're after yourself. For instance (I'm working from memory, and it's been a while since I've worked with this stuff, so it's probably not syntactically correct):
Second, this can be done remotely, assuming that AS-remoting is enabled at the target. Which would get really tricky to do with Perl or Python or even Expect.
IIRC, it would just be a matter of changing the tell to something like tell "itunes" on "Kenny's Macintosh". The rest of the script would remain the same. But then, debugging is a real nightmare...
Where the value of X-Mailer: is the true measure of a man...
> Why applescript? That's because mac applications can include "dictionaries" of commands that applescript can use.
R eference/Open_Scripti_Architecture/>
Actually:
"The Open Scripting Architecture (OSA) is an API that provides a standard mechanism for creating scriptable applications and for writing scripting components to implement scripting languages. The AppleScript component implements AppleScript, the standard scripting language defined by Apple, but developers can also write scripting components for additional scripting languages."
-- <http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/
So you're not restricted to using AppleScript to get those benefits.
Python, for example, is able to both send and receive Apple Events.