AppleScript: A comprehensive Guide to Scripting and Automation on OS X

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See what people are saying about the book:

"Hanaan Rosenthal and Bill Cheeseman as technical reviewer, have put together the best of the best regarding AppleScripting so far." MacCompanion 12/2004

"All the stuff I had to pick out of two or three books and half a dozen PDFs now in one place. You could teach a college course from it. ... , but Rosenthal's comprehensive guide is the best reference I've read so far. Everything I wanted to know about AppleScript is covered clearly with succinct examples"

Gary Cosimini
Business Development Director
Creative Professional Solutions
Adobe Systems Incorporated

"This is one of the few AppleScript books completely ineffective against insomnia. It is exhaustive and fun, expansive and concise, and an excellent how-to and reference guide all in one.
The author not only knows his subject cold, but knows it from real-world experience, which shows, and for which their is no substitute. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn AppleScript or polish their existing understanding"

John Thorsen,
Presdent of TecSoft

Scripters of any level can pick up new information or brush up on familiar subjects.

Introductory chapters explain how to use AppleScript from the ground up, along with dedicated chapters about strings, numbers, dates, handlers, and more.

Intermediate scripters can expand their horizons with chapters detailing user interaction, manipulating files, harnessing errors, and more.

Professional scripters can benefit from advanced subjects such as script objects, debugging, healthy scriptwriting, and automation.

Completely covers the ins and outs of AppleScript for Mac OS X.

Another book about AppleScript? No, not really; this is the book about AppleScript. There are enough books that either summarize the language or just touch on the basics; this one is written for real people who need to use AppleScript to get real things done.
This book starts from the scripter’s point of view. It is organized based on the way the scripter uses the language, and pulls together all aspects of the language that pertain to that subject.
It starts with some in-depth introductory chapters on subjects such as variables, lists, and values, to explain the language to beginners and intermediate users. From there, it goes into subjects such as text manipulation, working with files, creating interfaces, and more. These subjects are explained and organized from a functional real-world viewpoint; after all, Hanaan has been writing scripts for a living for almost ten years, and knows which subjects are important, what commands get used, and where you should be careful. Most chapters end with a summary that reiterates the important commands, properties, and other facts covered therein. This helps you get information quickly when you need it.
The book also gets into advanced topics, but instead of being written in a way that excludes beginners and leaves advanced users wanting more, it takes a different approach: every subject is given background and basic exercises to allow beginners to figure it out. Then, the text explores the core of the matter, and looks at the subject from all possible angles, emphasizing the important issues. This book allows you to get what you need to be a better scripter, whether you create automated systems for a living, or just want to make a little less work for yourself and make life more fun in the process!

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Download scripts for the book (401 scripts; 258K .sit)

Download table of contents summary (3-page PDF; 74K)

Download full table of contents (20-page PDF; 119K)

Download sample chapter (15-page PDF; 480K)

Download 2/05 InDesign Magazine article script and templates (Folder; 196K)

 

About Hanaan Rosenthal (Author) more...

OK, so who are we kidding, this part is not some facts concerning the author’s life, but rather where I get to write good stuff about myself. So, here I go with some info about myself and how I got to be a scripter: I started with computer graphics when I was 10 years old. I got a Sinclair 8-bit computer, wrote a couple of graphic programs and a game for it, and published a newsletter that had a one-issue life span. When I got to Providence, RI, from Israel at twice that age, I fell in love with Macs after taking a course at the Rhode Island School of Design. I quit my job delivering candy, bought a Mac II with $2,435 of the $2,500 my wife and I had in the bank, and became a computer graphics consultant. In 1996 I started scripting professionally, and my first 100K+ job came in 1998. This project turned into a disaster when the president of the company I was creating the system for decided to kill the project and blame it on me. Now it’s all but a funny memory, since over the past eight years I have had the pleasure of creating some pretty cool systems for some pretty neat people from companies such as Fidelity Investments, The Hartford, Wellington Management, Showtime Networks, The Boston Globe, and others. During that time I also met with John Thorsen and the rest of the folks from TECsoft Developers Consortium (TDC), which is a national consortium of AppleScripters. Some of my early clients were financial companies from the Boston area for which I created different graphing and document generation systems (all AppleScript based!). These jobs led to an AppleScript-based graphing engine I invented that allows me to add custom graphing capability to any AppleScript system. The daily stock graphs in The Boston Globe, for instance, are created using one of these systems. Now, as always, I mix consulting with other things I love such as caring for my two sweet kids, whom Johanne and I homeschool, pouring concrete countertops, renovating historical homes, and rooting for the Boston Red Sox.

About Bill Cheeseman (Technical Reviewer)

Bill Cheeseman lives in Quechee, Vermont. He is well known in the AppleScript community as webmaster of The AppleScript Sourcebook site and in the Cocoa community as the author of Cocoa Recipes for Mac OS X—The Vermont Recipes. He is the author of two AppleScript utilities for Mac OS X, PreFab UI Browser and PreFab UI Actions. He has programmed extensively in a variety of languages on a long succession of Apple II, Apple III, and Macintosh computers. In his spare time, he is a trial lawyer specializing in intellectual property, and environmental and commercial insurance coverage litigation.