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Summary: A new definitive guide
Review: "Applescript: The Definitive Guide" is aptly named as it is a complete and comprehensive explanatory manual and reference for Applescript. It is a worthy successor to Danny Goodman's classic of 1993 (updated in 1998), and is a current update, one which encompasses Mac OS 10.3 and Applescript 1.9.2. The author is Matt Neuberg, an expert in Applescript and programming. He believes that Applescript is entering into a "Golden Age" after a period of gradual decline. The Script Editor is now a Cocoa application, there is a system-wide script menu in OS 10.3, more Mac applications than ever are scriptable, there is an integration with Unix, and the free Applescript Studio application is capable of creating custom applications with a full Aqua interface. Applescript is designed for "low-end" programming but regardless, is not an easy language to learn and use. It may be relatively easy compared to other scripting languages but there is a need for a volume like this to explain how it works and how it allows one to program applications to communicate with each other. Neuberg writes with a high degree of technical depth and completeness. He covers the Applescript syntax, variables, handlers, objects, properties, and the like in a thorough manner. Neuberg maintains a focus on Applescript itself and not on how to use it. There are examples of use, of course, and guides to its use, but the book is designed to teach and document the language itself. The most informative material is combined in the chapter on "Dictionaries". There are indexed catalogs contained in all scriptable applications which provide syntax guides, vocabulary, and other important data for use by Applescript. Dictionaries can help guide one through programming that application. Sometimes the presentation is much like a script itself, dense, logically rigid, and inelegant. Of course, the subject matter is not meant for beach reading. Programmers and hard-core Mac users will benefit from the content of the book and likely use it as a regular reference.
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Summary: Finally We Have A Complete AppleScript Reference Book
Review: After over 10 years using AppleScript, I found information in this book that I didn't know. The problem with AppleScript is that easy things are possible and hard things are very hard. This book does a fantastic job of showing how to resolve the many problems that can arise when you try and create scripts more complex than a "Hello World" script.
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Summary: At last, the truth about AppleScript
Review: 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 what to avoid. Part III tries to extend the same thorough methods to the process of creating applications in AppleScript, beginning with application dictionaries. Here Neuburg, like every other AppleScript user, bangs hard into the basic structural flaw of AppleScript: that all the interesting semantics and no small part of the syntax are implemented in other applications, not in AppleScript. Everything you want to actually accomplish with AppleScript, you do by sending messages to other programs -- the Finder, TextEdit, BBEdit, Mail, and so forth. The only documentation you have is each app's dictionary, and it can never be adequate. Chapter 19, "Dictionaries," contains a long editorial on "Inadequacies of the Dictionary" that details all the reasons that an app's dictionary can never tell you enough to use the app. Some of the reasons are structural (there's just no way to express the needed information) and some are due to human failure (the people who write dictionaries do a clumsy, inconsistent, and sometimes erroneous job). Neuburg can't fix these issues, but he does his best to prepare you to work around them. Nevertheless, as he says in another context, "AppleScript programming is often indistinguishable from guessing." To sum up: this book is a deep, thorough exploration of all the quirks, dusty corners, and skeleton-filled closets of AppleScript. Reading it will make you far better prepared to use AppleScript productively.
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Summary: Mac Guild Review
Review: AppleScript The Definitive Guide What the Book is About This book aims to provide a complete explanatory manual and reference to AppleScript, up to date with Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther). Target Audience The 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 Expect Perhaps 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 Expect In 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 section is that it contains a complete worked example of how to create an AppleScript to do a repetitive document management task. The example uses Framemaker; this has the disadvantage that people who don't have Framemaker won't be able to try it out. The point is to illustrate that no prior knowledge of the Framemaker dictionary is required - you can figure it out for yourself if you know how to ask the application ! Part 2 - The AppleScript Language, is intended as both a reference and instruction. As the author says, 'the order of the exposition is pedagogical' - you are supposed to read the chapters in order. This section explains all the language features and illustrates pitfalls including those caused by forgetting AppleScript is not English. Part 3 - AppleScript in Action, is where, as the author puts it, having learned to use the sword in Part 2, you now go out and do battle. It covers dictionaries, scripting additions, working with applications both scriptable and unscriptable, working with UNIX and finally writing your own applications. Again in this section problems are foreseen and solutions provided. There are appendices on Apple's 'aeut' resource and general AppleScript resources such as websites. Highlights The depth of the coverage is amazing and the approach of teaching you how to learn for yourself is refreshing. If you are interested in linguistics as well as computer languages then this book is a delight. A language manual written by a linguist, it frequently compares and contrasts AppleScript to English and other computer languages. Mac Guild Grade A+ (Awesome) Final Words If you want to know everything there is to know about AppleScript, then this book is essential. If on the other hand you are looking for a very practical tutorial or cookbook, be warned that after reading all of this book, I still have not typed any 'Hello World' AppleScript into AppleScript Studio. Maybe I just don't do enough boring, repetitive tasks with my Mac.
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Summary: the Worst O'Reilly I've ever used
Review: I am for the first time not happy with my O'Reilly purchase. I am fluent in many programming & scripting languages. I bought this book so that I could get past the limited information I found from Apple. I was wrong to do so. The Apple documentation, limited as it may be is much more useful. I have found little to no information that was helpful in this book. It gives few commands and fewer syntax rules or examples. I don't dismiss the possiblity that if I had been AppleScripting for years I might not think the same way about this title. However, I think if you are looking to do practical things with AppleScript, like "arrange the year, day, and month in a string in the order of your choosing", don't expect this book to help.
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Summary: the Worst O'Reilly I've ever used
Review: I am for the first time not happy with my O'Reilly purchase. I am fluent in many programming & scripting languages. I bought this book so that I could get past the limited information I found from Apple. I was wrong to do so. The Apple documentation, limited as it may be is much more useful. I have found little to no information that was helpful in this book. It gives few commands and fewer syntax rules or examples. I don't dismiss the possiblity that if I had been AppleScripting for years I might not think the same way about this title. However, I think if you are looking to do practical things with AppleScript, like "arrange the year, day, and month in a string in the order of your choosing", don't expect this book to help.
Rating:
Summary: the Worst O'Reilly I've ever used
Review: I am for the first time not happy with my O'Reilly purchase. I am fluent in many programming & scripting languages. I bought this book so that I could get past the limited information I found from Apple. I was wrong to do so. The Apple documentation, limited as it may be is much more useful. I have found little to no information that was helpful in this book. It gives few commands and fewer syntax rules or examples. I don't dismiss the possiblity that if I had been AppleScripting for years I might not think the same way about this title. However, I think if you are looking to do practical things with AppleScript, like "arrange the year, day, and month in a string in the order of your choosing", don't expect this book to help.
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Summary: Applescript: The Definitive Guide Rocks!!!!!
Review: 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.
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Summary: Absolutely not for beginners
Review: I have some programming experience in RealBasic and 4D's scripting language and decided to dive head first into AppleScript. The editorial review on this book says: "The book assumes no prior knowledge or previous programming experience, but nevertheless seeks to offer a complete treatment of the language's capabilities." After I quit reading the book when I got to chapter 11, I can safely say that I absolutely disagree with that statement.
I found most of the examples to be very confusing and the numerous references to explain certain exceptions and reasons in later chapters to be very frustrating. Perhaps the nature of AppleScript is just confusing so I do not want to fault the author. If you are looking to learn AppleScript as a total beginner, like me, this is not the book for you.
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Summary: Another awesome reference guide from O'Reilly
Review: 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.
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