Talk:AppleScript

message: Even as a confirmed Macophile, I think it's a bit much to describe AppleScript as a "programming language," especially since the same description isn't applied here to JavaScript or Perl. - Hephaestos 04:45 Mar 1, 2003 (UTC)
: I've moved it back to where it belongs. Some time ago, someone decided for mysterious reasons to rename all the articles about programming languages in the form "X programming language", even though the only sensible reason to use such names was as a disambiguator for things like "C" or "Pascal" whose names are not unambiguous by themselves. As you come across any that have not yet been put back, please rename them or, if there are problems with split page histories, give a shout out at the pump. --Brion 04:49 Mar 1, 2003 (UTC)
::Um, the above discussion seems to imply that the form 'X programming language' was corrected in March of 2003, but in fact it is now August of 2004, and the article's name is 'AppleScript programming language.' I would like to correct this myself to simply 'AppleScript,' but I don't know how, (I understand about the 'move' tab, but I'm uncertain because of all the warnings about links changing). AdmN 16:37, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think I am now in favor of "AppleScript programming language", based on discussions at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (languages). AdmN 23:03, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Programming language reference 

message: Just typing out loud: I think we need a section on script editors and IDEs, with seperate articles as well:
* Apple Script Editor, (or something like Script Editor (Apple computer)???)
* AppleScript Studio, surely, this deserves its own article, with ASS as a redirect ;-)
* FaceSpan
* Script Debugger
* Scripter
* ScriptWizard, (the first third-party AppleScript editor)
* Smile (software)
And while we're at it, people and places:
* People:
** Jon Pugh
** Cal Simone
** Sal Soghoian
** you get the idea...
* Companies:
** Main Event Software
** Satimage
** etc...
I recently created Late Night Software, check one off the list. :) func(talk) 21:48, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There is now a stub: Script Editor. I guess a disambig was not felt nessesary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.20.209.146 (talk • contribs) 07:10, 14 February 2006
Refined the Automator section a bit to include more correct verbage, (actions), and OS Versions for Automator (10.4 and later).Johncwelch (talk) 22:42, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Editors and IDEs 

message: Three of the links at the bottom (http://macscripter.net/, http://scriptbuilders.net/, http://bbs.applescript.net/) are all part of the same site grouping, so to speak.  They should probably be consolidated somehow. 71.240.242.39 14:44, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links 

message: "It is arguable that the main reason that the Mac remained a powerhouse in the publishing market after Quark (and other applications) were ported to Microsoft Windows, was that Mac users could automate complex workflows." How about getting rid of the weasel words? ("It is arguable that...") --Aughtandzero 02:24, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Arguable that" 

message: This article contains multiple errors, omissions, misconceptions, etc. It'd take some time to go through them all, so for now here's one example of the sort of fundamental inaccuracy that needs to be dealt with:
:"Note the similarities between the AEOM model and the considerably more recent DOM system used in XML. Both decompose a document into a hierarchy of objects, and offer the programmer a standardized iterative method to access the contents. Differences between the systems lie primarily in the user-level syntax"
This is both misleading and wrong. There are major differences between AEOM and DOM. AEOM operates at a much higher level of abstraction: DOM is a simple object-oriented API; AEOM is a query-driven View-Controller layer that sits above an application's object-oriented Model layer, rather like how XPath sits atop DOM. "User-level syntax" is irrelevant, since the Apple Event Manager is a programmatic API; whatever user-level syntax AppleScript, Mac::Glue, etc. want to spread on top of that is entirely up to them. (Current high-level bridges all happen to use an OO-like syntax, which is probably one of the reasons a lot of observers mistakenly think AEOM is 'just another DOM'.)
The following comparative example from the article reinforces this basic misunderstanding of how the AEOM works:
The concept of an object hierarchy can also be expressed using nested prepositional phrases:
  pixel 7 of row 3 of TIFF image "my bitmap"
which in another programming language might be expressed as sequential function calls:
  getTIFF("my bitmap").getRow(3).getPixel(7);
Object specifiers (the 'pixel 7', 'row 3', etc.) are not comparable to accessor methods. On the client side, what you're doing is constructing a single, first-class query object that will eventually be packed into an Apple event and sent to the application to interpret, not invoking a bunch of accessor methods as the second code segment implies. AppleScript may use an OO-like syntax for constructing these queries, but it's completely wrong (if a very common mistake) to assume, based on appearance, that it must also follow OO rules and behaviour.
In another language, the above 'reference' (i.e. query) would be expressed, sans syntactic sugar, as something like:
q = Query().elementByName('TIFF image', 'my bitmap').elementByIndex('row', 3).elementByIndex('pixel', 7)
print q 
# <AEBridge::Query 0x16c71b4>
To actually get the referenced object/value, you'd then need to construct and send a 'get' event containing that query as its direct parameter:
q = Query().elementByName('TIFF image', 'my bitmap').elementByIndex('row', 3).elementByIndex('pixel', 7)
result = Application('My Graphics App').send('get', q)
For usability's sake, properly designed high-level bridges like to hide a lot of this pedantry beneath a more concise, easier-to-read syntax, e.g.:
q = app('My Graphics App').TIFF_images['my bitmap'].rows[3].elements[7]
result = q.get()
but underneath this surface everything is being translated to queries as before. It's a bit like how object-relational mappers provide an OO-like interface to relational databases.
Anyone planning to work on this article should read the following paper by two of the original Apple engineers first: The Open Scripting Architecture: Automating, Integrating, and Customizing Applications (Cook & Harris, 1993; PDF). While it predates newer additions like Cocoa Scripting, it's the best explanation the underlying concepts and principles, as well as the original technologies involved, that I'm aware of. --Hhas 15:57, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article Problems 

message: As far as I can tell, the "AppleScript Studio" link doesn't go anywhere. It would be nice if there really were a section (or better yet, a page) on this environment, but I'm not qualified to write it.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.243.10.93 (talk) 19:27, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed the link.  Maybe it linked to something in the past that got trimmed or moved around.  At the moment I don't see anything to link to. Fletcher (talk) 20:01, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  AppleScript Studio link 

message: I've been looking for the Apple scripts for folder actions and, under 10.8, they're all gone, or they are deeply buried. This is a total PO because I used to use a couple of them all the time as folder and file organizational tools. And there are no clues in Apple's documentation for Lion as to where the hell they've gone. Why get rid of a couple hundred KB of program when all machines measure their capacity in Gigs? Smooth move Apple, and (of course, the Apple plan, always) no warning.
Here's the point: this article needs to be rewritten to reflect the loss of those pre-written scripts that were so useful.Theonemacduff (talk) 02:06, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  gone baby gone 

message: Should some of this content be migrated to or duplicated in the AppleScript Wikibook? Poetcsw (talk) 20:33, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  AppleScript Wikibook 

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replies: text: It worked, but saying what the MacRuby roadmap said back in 2009 isn't very interesting any more; they don't say anything about OSA now, so perhaps those plans were dropped and are no longer of any interest. Guy Harris (talk) 18:10, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified