What Applescript book?

There are newbies [ know something about programming ] and then there are total newbies [ no programming experience ]. It would be difficult to learn programming from reading one book.

Unfortunately, Apple seems to be phasing out Applescript in favor to Javascript. The authors seem to have gotten the word and stopped revising their books.

Computer books are expensive. I buy them used on Amazon.

I like:

Learn AppleScript: The Comprehensive Guide to Scripting and

Automation on Mac OS X, Third Edition

Here are the cheaper used versions.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1430223618/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1_olp?keywords=The+Comprehensive+Guide+to+Scripting+and+Automation+on+Mac+OS+X%2C+Third+Edition&qid=1551988143&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmr1

Book:

Apart from the Applescript 1 2 3 book you mentioned, there are also a few more books for beginner:

AppleScript The Comprehensive Guide to Scripting and Automation on Mac OS X

https://www.apress.com/us/book/9781430253525

AppleScript The Definitive Guide

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596102111.do

There are also a few simple and short guide to get your feet wet:

AppleScript Finder Guide (Free)

https://applescriptlibrary.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/applescript-finder-guide.pdf

Inside Macintosh- Interapplication Communication (Free) - bit more advance and detail but you would understand better about apple events and there's a chapter on applescript too

https://books.googhttp://macosxautomation.com/training/video/peachpit.html

Apple developer guide: (If you wanna find out what has been changed since 2009, this is the site!)

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/AppleScript/Conceptual/AppleScriptLangGuide/introduction/ASLR_intro.html

All of these are old, but honestly speaking, not much improvement were made....and I still strongly recommend the Applescript 1 2 3 book since it's for beginner!

Video tutorial serve as an introduction to applescript by the author of Applescript 1 2 3:

AppleScript Seminar:

https://www.macosxautomation.com/applescript/video/moovs/AppleScriptSeminar.mp4

Forum/community you should join: (Ben Waldie does a lot of tutorial on applescript, you should check him out)

http://macosxautomation.com/training/video/peachpit.html

Applescript User Digest: (sign up for this and you will get updates on user requesting help for applescripts):

https://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/applescript-users

There are plenty of videos on youtube and except "applescript", your searching keywords would be "Sal Soghoian" and "Ben Waldie"

Though Sal Soghoian no longer works as the product manger for Apple automation, he is now working for The Omni Group, so it's worth checking out those scripting tutorial from The Omni Group apps too.

In my opinion, I would rather learn Javascript since that's what apple is heading to, check out JXA, it's very stable and you have the opportunity to master a widely used language. Unlike the moody applescripts, giving you trouble once a while after an update on mac os / specific application update, eg: no longer supporting applescripts.

Hope it helps!

Adobe Photoshop includes a built-in JavaScript interpreter, commonly referred to as “JSX”[1]. API documents are at:

adobe [dot] com/devnet/photoshop/scripting.html

Not a huge fan of Adobe’s JSX myself (it’s a bit twitchy), but unlike AS and VBA it’s cross-platform and the JavaScript language is far better documented and supported than AppleScript is, so you may find it a better choice going forward. Can’t recommend a specific book, but there’s no shortage of current beginner-level JS books on Amazon. Best place to ask would be on the Adobe Photoshop forums.

--

[1] Not to be confused with macOS’s JavaScript for Automation (“JXA”), which is completely unrelated and dead as a doorknob.

See if Automater will do the job.

What is the goal of this person? Any project in mind?

While JXA, Javascript, seems to be apple's direction, authors seem to be ignoring it.

https://apple-dev.groups.io/g/jxa/wiki/JXA-Resources

Amazon didn't reveal any books on JXA and suggested I search on JSA. So maybe Applescript has some life in it. I think it's too early for a beginner to start in JXA.

If the goal is to learn something about programming, you may want to consider programming a robot. There are a number of books on the subject. Note: You will need to buy a robot, a PI computer and probably run linux. You can run Linux in the free virtual box by Oracle. Of course, I've run linux in Virtual Box, but have not tried to control a robot.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1788479599/ref=sspa_dk_detail_4?psc=1#reader_B076HQC1KH

It is quite possible to produce write-only code that as a proud "parent", you beam over its obfuscation as no amount of instructional books prevail others from understanding what you have wrought. AppleScript is bad enough, being an archaic and limited language. JavaScript for Automation is close to the ultimate comprehension insult.

Applescript is a rather minimal language with a bunch of bolted on APIs which are inadequately documented. While Javascript as many more built in function, the JXA implementation it seems to use all the same APIs. In particular, JXA still has the same Applescript dictionaries. You think with all the effort of creating JXA Apple could have spent some time on enhancing the documentation in the dictionaries.

R

Now that Sal has left the building, I suspect that both AppleScript and JXA will continue a downward spiral of Apple interest. After all, Apple is busy driving nails with the Swift hammer, and nothing invented elsewhere (or within) appears to matter anymore.

Well initially the Applescript was to allow my collegue to understand

the scripts i had made to understand when errors came up then what must

he do?

That's a lot more reasonable. I'd start the colleague off getting familiar with AppleScript. It was designed so that I would be readable for novices. I put in lots of log statements in my Applescript. When a problem occurs, I run it in the AppleScript editor to narrow down the problem. There is an editor view that shows what all the external calls do. For those cases where the script cannot be run in the editor, I include a file log.