AppleScript is a scripting language created by Apple Inc that facilitates automated control over scriptable Mac applications.
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AppleScript is a scripting language created by Apple Inc that facilitates automated control over scriptable Mac applications.
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AppleScript is primarily a scripting language developed by Apple to do inter-application communication using Apple events.
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AppleScript has some processing abilities of its own, in addition to sending and receiving Apple events to applications.
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AppleScript can do basic calculations and text processing, and is extensible, allowing the use of scripting additions that add new functions to the language.
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Mainly AppleScript relies on the functionality of applications and processes to handle complex tasks.
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AppleScript has some elements of procedural programming, object-oriented programming, and natural language programming tendencies in its syntax, but does not strictly conform to any of these programming paradigms.
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Apple engineers recognized that a similar, but more object-oriented scripting language could be designed to be used with any application, and the AppleScript project was born as a spin-off of a research effort to modernize the Macintosh as a whole and finally became part of System 7.
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AppleScript was designed to be used as an accessible end-user scripting language, offering users an intelligent mechanism to control applications, and to access and modify data and documents.
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AppleScript uses Apple events, a set of standardized data formats that the Macintosh operating system uses to send information to applications, roughly analogous to sending XPath queries over XML-RPC in the world of web services.
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For example, an AppleScript to create a simple web gallery might do the following:.
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AppleScript was designed with the ability to build scripts intuitively by recording user actions.
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AppleScript has several user interface options, including dialogs, alerts, and list of choices.
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Whereas Apple events are a way to send messages into applications, AppleScript is a particular language designed to send Apple events.
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In keeping with the objective of ease-of-use for beginners, the AppleScript language is designed on the natural language metaphor, just as the graphical user interface is designed on the desktop metaphor.
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Heart of the AppleScript language is the use of terms that act as nouns and verbs that can be combined.
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For example, rather than a different verb to print a page, document or range of pages, AppleScript uses a single "print" verb which can be combined with an object, such as a page, a document or a range of pages.
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AppleScript includes syntax for ordinal counting, "the first paragraph", as well as cardinal, "paragraph one".
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Many AppleScript processes are managed by blocks of code, where a block begins with a command command and ends with an end command statement.
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AppleScript was implemented as a scripting component, and the basic specs for interfacing such components to the OSA were public, allowing other developers to add their own scripting components to the system.
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The AppleScript Editor is able to directly edit and run some of the OSA languages.
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