AppleScript in a Nutshell-Preface

Preface

AppleScript continues to evolve on Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X as the ultimate scripting tool for the Macintosh. AppleScript's power to automate the operating system and complex applications such as graphics, desktop-publishing, and database programs, as well as a friendly English language dialect that helps ambitious scripters get up to speed quickly with their own applets, is not matched by any other platform's programming language. Yet, only a small percentage of Macintosh users are even aware that AppleScript is installed with their operating system. Those who are aware of AppleScript's presence on their machine often do not take full advantage of this tool to automate their daily computing activities, both on their local machine and over the Internet.

Who should and can use AppleScript? The following users come to mind right away: system administrators who are automating tasks with networks and applications; web and graphics professionals who want to control the development of web sites and publications; scientists, mathematicians, and engineers who require applets to make calculations and automate their own software tools, as well as day-to-day programmers and students who are designing and prototyping new programs. Not to mention everday users who want to automate their own computing tasks, such as file and folder backups.

If you are on a Macintosh, then you should be putting AppleScript to work for you.

The purpose of this book is primarily three-fold:

Describe AppleScript and its tools (Part I) and provide a core language reference (Part II) that all users can keep next to their computers as they write new scripts.
Provide detailed descriptions, examples, and reference information on how to script the numerous system-level programs on Mac OS 9 ( Part III and Part IV) and Mac OS X (Part V), such as the Finder on both OS versions, Sherlock, and Network Setup Scripting.
Give scripters general insight on how to approach the scripting of several programs that can be automated by AppleScript, such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, FileMaker Pro, QuarkXPress, SoundJam MP, and OutLook Express. The mantra is, study the "application class" in the program's AppleScript dictionary and you'll be up and running with scripting that program before you know it. (Chapter 1 discusses the application class in general terms; while the application classes of all the various system components are described in detail throughout the book.)

Hopefully, this book will help reveal AppleScript to more Macintosh users, thus providing them with another outlet for creativity and productivity.