AppleScript

[Looking for pointers to Applescript home page, tutorials, etc.]
[Discuss the relationship between Applescript and Tcl - aka TclAppleScript and especially TclAE ]

CL likes "The AppleScript Sourcebook" [L1 ], the AppleScript FAQs of Fred Terry [L2 ] and macscripter [L3 ], and "Cocoa and AppleScript: from Top to Bottom" [L4 ] [explain AppleEvents?] [find ref to "AppleScript for Absolute Beginners"].

Think of AppleScript in two aspects:

a language,
which happens to hook into MacOS profoundly.

As it turns out, these two are largely decoupled. In fact, the content of the latter really is about OSA--which the latest Mac-specific versions of Tcl ...

peterc: If dead trees are your thing, ORA's "AppleScript: The Definitive Guide" [L5 ], by Matt Neuburg, is very good.

Lars H: Here is an interesting quote from Chapter 5, Section The English-likeness monster of said book:

: As we have already seen, AppleScript is English-like. Its vocabulary appears to be made up of English imperative verbs, nouns, prepositional phrases, and even an occasional relative clause.
: Whether this English-likeness is a good thing or not is debatable. It is probably responsible for attracting users who would otherwise be frightened by the rigid-looking pseudo-mathematical terseness of a language like Perl, with its funny variable names, its braces and brackets and semicolons. Personally, though, I'm not fond of AppleScript's English-likeness. For one thing, I feel it is misleading. It gives one the sense that one just knows AppleScript because one knows English; but that is not so. It also gives one the sense that AppleScript is highly flexible and accepting of commands expressed just however one cares to phrase them; and that is really not so.

Whether or not one likes it, it is certainly a characteristic that sets AppleScript apart from most scripting languages.

AppleScript

See also