BKTAOAPS.RVW 940517 Hayden Books 11711 N. College Ave., Suite 140 Carmel, IN 46032-5634 317-573-2500 317-581-3535 800-428-5331 800-428-3804 or 201 West 103rd St. Indianapolis, IN 46290 317-581-3718 fax: 317-581-4669 hayden@hayden.com haydenbks@aol.com 76350.3014@compuserve.com "The Tao of AppleScript", Schneider, 1993?, 1-56830-075-1, U$24.95/C$31.95 In the ongoing debate about command line versus graphical interfaces, power is usually ceded to the command line, while ease of use gets credited to the GUI. One aspect of the command line interface, however, tends to be missed out in the discussion. Batch files in MS-DOS, shell scripts in UNIX, COM files in VMS, and so forth, provide a relatively quick and simple way of automating repetitive tasks. GUI and menu-based systems have made attempts to devise "recorder" systems to "replay" a certain sequence, but a resized window or an added menu item can wreak havoc with such scripts. Applescript is an attempt to address this issue. Built on the concepts of the object environment, it provides for manipulation of not only Macintosh system functions but those of application programs, as well. This makes it a powerful tool, not only for system management functions, but also for building macros and scripts for programs which don't have them. Unfortunately, the author of this work has decided to concentrate on the power of the language. What results is a readable and easy-to-follow programming manual--but a programming manual, nevertheless. Examples are few, but get thoroughly debugged. An introduction with many simplistic examples might better have encouraged the masses to explore Applescript for themselves. This package, containing a disk with Applescript and utilities, is possibly an important extension of the Macintosh environment. Anyone who has ever wanted to collect the steps in some process and do them all together, should be aware of it. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994 BKTAOAPS.RVW 940517 ====================== DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733 Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" (Oct. '94) Springer-Verlag