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Apple Training Series: AppleScript 1-2-3
- By Sal Soghoian, Bill Cheeseman
- Published Dec 19, 2008 by Peachpit Press.
Book
- Sorry, this book is no longer in print.
Description
- Copyright 2009
- Edition: 1st
- Book
- ISBN-10: 0-321-14931-9
- ISBN-13: 978-0-321-14931-2
We know what you’re thinking. You’ve heard about AppleScript. You’ve heard that it can do amazing things. You’ve heard that it can automate away the tiring, redundant, repetitive tasks you do with the computer.
All true. But you’re not sure about what’s involved with using it. Is it difficult? Is it programming? After all, you’re just a better-than average computer user. You know what you know, and your expertise serves you pretty well. But recently you’ve reached the point of asking yourself “Is there a better way?” The answer is “Yes.”
And relax, you just got lucky. This book is for you.
If you’ve never written a single line of computer code—this book is for you. If the most technical thing you do on the computer is calculate a column in Excel—this book is for you. If you’re tired of doing the same thing over and over—this book is for you.
It’s about being motivated to explore, understand, and take advantage of the tools you already own. AppleScript is free—the only price for its use is your desire to finally sit down and take a few moments to absorb and activate its magic.
This book starts at square one and walks you through the process of understanding and writing AppleScript—step by step, one concept at a time—until you find yourself suddenly creating powerful and useful automated solutions. And the lessons in this book are based on a decade of experience teaching hands-on classes to folks just like you. You can do this. You can become Master of your Computer Universe!
Still don’t believe us? Open the first chapter and start reading. You’ll see.
Updates
Errata
Lesson 1 - The First Step
Page 14, second paragraph following script 1.6:
Change "edit it by deleting 'the startup disk' and entering in its place 'home'" to "edit it by deleting 'get the index of Finder window "Macintosh HD"' and entering in its place 'open home'.
Page 19, script 1.12:
Change the text of script 1.12 to 'tell application "Finder" to get the target of the front Finder window'", matching Figure 1.8.
Lesson 3 - Identifying Objects
Page 146, first paragraph:
Add "(These scripts are provided to illustrate the point, but they will not compile as shown. To compile Script 3.3, for example, remove 'of application "QuickTime Player"' and enclose the statement in a 'tell application "Quicktime Player"' block.)"
Lesson 6 - Information Tools
script 6.22:
Change the capitalization of script 6.22 so that the last word is '"TextEdit"'.
Lesson 7 - Actions with Items
script 7.20:
Change line 17 of script 7.20 to 'set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {""}'
Lesson 9 - Communicating with the User
script 9.63:
Change line 17 of script 9.63 to 'display dialog "File \"" & item_name & "\" is not the correct type."
Lesson 18 - working with Lists and Records
script 18.1:
Change the last line of script 18.1 to '--> returns: text'.
Lesson 22
Page 650: second-to-last line of code should read "DIMENSIONS", not "DIMEMSIONS"
Page 672: "calcluate" should be "calculate"
Lesson 24
Page 714: "returns the current hour as string:" should be "returns the current seconds as string:"
Lesson 25 - Unit Coercions
script 25.26:
Change the last line of script 25.26 to '--> returns: miles 1.242742384475
Lesson 27 - Connecting to Network Servers
script 27.17:
Change the script to 'mount volume "smb://
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