Learn AppleScript: The Comprehensive Guide to Scripting and Automation on Mac OS X 3rd Edition (Learn (Apress)) [Paperback]

Only got through half this book but is has been a enjoyable read so far. For an existing programmer it can be a bit slow at times but this is understandable as this additional information will be needed by new programmers. The syntax of AppleScript is pretty usual to someone who is more use to languages like c, python etc. Apple seem to have tried to make it more readable but with a number of key words overloaded it is difficult to remember. The text handling is primitive compared with other scripting languages.

Very much an in depth guid to Applescript. Have found it moderately useful but somewhat unreadable. It is very much a reference book. Delivery was exceptional considering its enormous weight!

Before writing about « Learn_AppleScript_The_Comprehensive_Guide_to_Scripting_and_Automation_on_Mac_OS_X_Third_Edition », I wish to ask you to be lenient with me.English isn't my main language. I try to be understandable but I am sure that you will find some oddities which would fool the AppleScript's interpreter. Happily, I doesn't try to write for machines : all of them are dumb but to real readers with a real brain.
I discovered AppleScript years ago. At this time, « AppleScript's Language Guide » from Apple and the app's dictionaries were all my resources. Some years later I discovered a French book available only thru the net : « Aller plus loin en AppleScript » available thru http://trad.applescript.free.fr/apl/AplAp.pdf.
It's fine but it's dedicated to users with a serious knowledge of the tool. Yes, I write about a tool, not about a language. I don't wan't to open a polemic. I just decided once that languages are dedicated to communication between human beeings. So AppleScript's links with languages are only those which gave me the opportunity to exchange with guys like Hamish Sanderson, guys able to use some of the 24 hours a day which we are given to help other person whose knowledge isn't so extended that their own one.
« The Comprehensive Guide...» appears to me as an extension of this activity as helper.
In more than 1100 pages, it offers a synthesis of what we wanted to know at least once during our life as scripter.
The authors took the long road, the one which doesn't give to the readers a set of ready to use scripts. They explain step by step not only what to do (which would give an interesting and useful book) but mainly, at least from my point of view, explain why to do this or that.
This approach is the one used by the teachers whose name is always present in my old memory.
Exactly as when we learnt to read, every chapter introduce us to new precise features with an enlarged background.Without this background, learning the nmeaning of reserved word would be a boring one, the one well known by every old fashioned scripters. Those with no deep computer knowledge, those which want to tailor the applications which where delivered with their computer or those which they bought so that they fit exactly their needs. Applications developers can't offer features responding to 100% of the problems which the user may encounter. Happily, when an application is well designed, it is able to execute tasks which weren't really included in its specifications as long as we describe what we want whith a comprehensive set of instructions.
All in all, AppleScript offer a short set of commands with a short set of syntactic rules.
After reading carefully « The Comprehensive Guide...», with a tool which some pro of computer programming may look contemptuously, we will be able, to enhance our tools so that they will achieve tasks which their designers often didn't thought about.

But don't dream, reading such a book isn't what I would urge you to read on the beach during summer holidays. Getting knowledge requires a bit of attention and, why hide it, a lot of efforts. What's important is that the Guide help us to advance step by step in a wonderful universe. It's not a garden in which we must wait during months to get retribution for what we did. We read a few set of pages and bingo, we may write some short scripts giving immediately a true reward. So, as far as we advance to our own speed, we accumulate a lot of knowledge.

Oops, I forgot a detail : from my point of view, the paperback version would be the best one for true newbies. For those with some original ;knowledge of AppleScript, I feel that the PDF version would be more efficient. As in every PDFs, finding a specific info is really easy because a search doesn't rely upon a predefined index which is always a limited set of entry points.reflecting the way it's author thinks as well (an sometimes more) than what is available in a book.