I'd like to learn AppleScript as I am a heavy user of Alfred and Automator. Is AppleScript still worth learning? Can anyone recommend some good books as well, Amazon has some, but they are old.
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macOS AppleScript and Automator
- Thread starter robertcoogan
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It depends - are you planning on controlling other applications, or doing something more general purpose?
It's fairly 'niche'... shall we say. I';m kind of nostalgic for it since it's the first language I learned. Only very occasional use now - although it does still have those occasional use cases!
As Red Menace says, it very much depends what you're hoping to achieve.
As far as books go, as it is pretty niche, there's not a whole heap of recent literature out there. If I was you, I'd take a look here:
...bear in mind that nearly everything you read anywhere (book, website, whatever) re AppleScript is likely to be out of date to a certain extent.
Good luck! I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
As Red Menace says, it very much depends what you're hoping to achieve.
As far as books go, as it is pretty niche, there's not a whole heap of recent literature out there. If I was you, I'd take a look here:
...bear in mind that nearly everything you read anywhere (book, website, whatever) re AppleScript is likely to be out of date to a certain extent.
Good luck! I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
Months ago, I also checked the situation and found these rather old books myself. They are not bad though! I would recommend „Learn AppleScript: The Comprehensive Guide to Scripting and Automation on Mac OS X„
Is it worth? Well, I like to do some stuff with AppleScript as I do not want to write my own apps but control existing ones.
There is one thing to know/consider: Every scriptable app has its own style of Applescript implementation. The scripting of Finder sets the scene, in general, but the scriptable apps have their own dialects (learned developers or informatics professors may kill me know because I probably do not use the term „dialect“ correctly, as the science of programming languages goes...)
And that is an issue with all books. No book I know of covers a broad set of scriptable apps in depth. Instead they focus on general features of AppleScript. To learn scripting a specific app, there will be a lot of searching the internet and doing try and error.
For me, this is rather fun
And it helps a lot to do recurring tasks. As you use Automator, I think you will find AppleScript helpful.Some commands are hilarious
There is the “round“ command, and if you want to round in a way that 0.5 delivers 1, you have to code
Code:
set x to 0.5
round x rounding as taught in school;-)
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