Chapter 23: Automating with AppleScript

Overview

Although computers have been touted for years as the ultimate tool to perform redundant tasks, you may feel as though computers have generated new monotonous tasks. In previous Chapters, you learned about technologies in Mac OS X that help you launch documents, edit text, create multimedia, print, and perform hundreds of other tasks. And though you may be impressed by components in all of those technologies, no component does much alone — they tend to require user input. Scripting has long been a way to coordinate the different components of a task, by allowing you to compose a script that plays back a set of commands in order.

The AppleScript scripting language is a simplified programming language, which enables you to control your applications and perform tasks automatically. Scripts range from the simplest to the highly complex, depending on your skill at scripting, your knowledge of AppleScript’s nuances, and the requirements of your task. In this Chapter, you learn enough about AppleScript that even if you are a scripting novice you will get scripts up and running.

You will begin by learning the underlying technologies that make AppleScript possible — messages and events. After you understand messages and events, it’s on to an introduction of AppleScript and a look at the tools that enable you to run, modify, and create scripts of your own. Finally, you run through a few basic scripts, gaining an understanding of the AppleScript language as you go.