Automating Activities

Scripts make it easy to perform repetitive tasks. For example, suppose you are revising a document such as the AppleScript Language Guide. Every time you sit down to work on the Language Guide, you need to open the following documents:

the FrameMaker file "Language Guide book file," which contains the Language Guide text documents
the Script Editor script "latest test script," which contains sample scripts to test
the AppleWorks document "AppleWorks test doc," which you use for testing scripts that open and close documents and windows and work with words and paragraphs
the FileMaker Pro document "Mac OS 8.5 Registry" (distributed on the AppleScript SDK for developers), which provides information about the scripting terminology available for AppleScript and for scriptable parts of the Mac OS

Instead of individually opening each of these documents, you can put an alias to each document in a folder, then write a simple script that opens the files for you. Figure 2-3 shows the folder containing aliases to your documents and a script that opens them.

Figure 2-3 A script that automates a frequently performed set of steps