Inside Macintosh: AppleScript Language Guide /

Preface - About This Guide

Organization of This Guide

This guide is divided into two parts:

• Part 1, "Introducing AppleScript," provides an overview of the AppleScript language and the tasks you can perform with it.
• Part 2, "AppleScript Language Reference," provides reference descriptions of all of the features of the AppleScript language.

Part 1 contains these chapters:

• Chapter 1, "AppleScript, Scripts, and Scriptable Applications," introduces AppleScript and its capabilities.
• Chapter 2, "Overview of AppleScript," provides an overview of the elements of the AppleScript language.

Part 2 contains the following chapters:

• Chapter 3, "Values," describes the classes of data that can be stored and manipulated in scripts and the coercions you can use to change a value
  from one class to another.
• Chapter 4, "Commands," describes the types of commands available in AppleScript, including application commands, AppleScript commands, scripting addition commands, and user-defined commands. It also includes descriptions of all AppleScript commands and standard application commands.
• Chapter 5, "Objects and References," describes objects and their characteristics and explains how to refer to objects in scripts.
• Chapter 6, "Expressions," describes types of expressions in AppleScript, how AppleScript evaluates expressions, and operators you use to manipulate values.
• Chapter 7, "Control Statements," describes statements that control when and how other statements are executed. It includes information about Tell, If, and Repeat statements.
• Chapter 8, "Handlers," describes subroutines, command handlers, error handlers, and the scope of variables and properties in handlers and elsewhere in a script. It includes the syntax for defining and calling subroutines and error handlers.
• Chapter 9, "Script Objects," describes how to define and use script objects. It includes information about object-oriented programming techniques such as using inheritance and delegation to define groups of related objects.

At the end of the guide are three appendixes, a glossary of AppleScript terms, and an index.

• Appendix A, "The Language at a Glance," is a collection of tables that summarize the features of the AppleScript language. It is especially useful for experienced programmers who want a quick overview of the language.
• Appendix B, "Scriptable Text Editor Dictionary," defines the words in the AppleScript language that are understood by the Scriptable Text Editor sample application.
• Appendix C, "Error Messages," lists the error messages returned
  by AppleScript.