BTW Amorph, how would u suggest that I as a non programmer go about learning how to create my own apps in X? I figure, what the hell, let's go 4 it!!</strong><hr></blockquote>
That's the spirit!
[quote]<strong>Any advice on where to start? And can I do it through GUI based tools? Much appreciated if u could help out</strong><hr></blockquote>
You'd probably want to start with <a href="http://www.apple.com/applescript/macosx/ascript_studio/"; target="_blank">AppleScript Studio</a>, a GUI-based application that lets you design interfaces by dragging and dropping, and write code in an English-like syntax. Best of all, for your purposes, the whole point of AppleScript is to control other applications - for example, you can create a script that, when you double-click on it, grabs all the files in a certain folder, loads them into (say) Canvas, or Quark, or even Finder, has that application do a bunch of things to each file, and then save them out to another folder, or maybe FTP them to a remote machine. (Photoshop 7 isn't scriptable out of the box, but you can download a patch from Adobe that makes it scriptable.) If you do any repetitive work, AppleScript can make your life a lot easier.
First, you need to install the December 2001 Developer Tools, if you haven't already. (There's apparently an April 2002 Dev Tools in the works, too, so keep your eyes open!). Get a free <a href="http://developer.apple.com/membership/online.html"; target="_blank">ADC Online Membership</a>. Then you should pick up O'Reilly's excellent <a href="http://www.powells.com/search/DTSearch/search?kw=AppleScript+in+a+Nutshell&pokey=skeptopo tamus" target="_blank">AppleScript in a Nutshell</a> book - it's a reference, not a tutorial, but quite valuable. Subscribe to Apple's <a href="http://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/applescript-users"; target="_blank">AppleScript users</a> and <a href="http://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/applescript-studio"; target="_blank">AppleScript Studio</a> lists - there are a lot of helpful people there, including Apple employees, and there's all kinds of good stuff in the archives. (You might want to set your email client to filter them into their own folders, though - they're busy!) Bill Cheeseman runs a great site called the <a href="http://www.applescriptsourcebook.com/home.html"; target="_blank">AppleScript Sourcebook</a>, and Apple themselves have a <a href="http://www.apple.com/applescript/"; target="_blank">very nice site</a> devoted to AppleScript, with tutorials, a lot of sample scripts you can download and look at and play with, and links to many other resources.
The #1 rule of learning to write code is that you learn by doing: You can read all you want, but you won't really understand until you've actually tried to implement what you've read. Try modifying other people's scripts and see what happens. Take risks. Make changes just to see what happens. Don't worry about making mistakes, either. Everyone does, and (unlike OS 9, which would crash literally 8-10 times an hour if I was chasing down a nasty bug) OS X won't blink even if you screw up in a pretty major way.
Comments
<strong>
BTW Amorph, how would u suggest that I as a non programmer go about learning how to create my own apps in X? I figure, what the hell, let's go 4 it!!</strong><hr></blockquote>
That's the spirit!
[quote]<strong>Any advice on where to start? And can I do it through GUI based tools? Much appreciated if u could help out</strong><hr></blockquote>
You'd probably want to start with <a href="http://www.apple.com/applescript/macosx/ascript_studio/"; target="_blank">AppleScript Studio</a>, a GUI-based application that lets you design interfaces by dragging and dropping, and write code in an English-like syntax. Best of all, for your purposes, the whole point of AppleScript is to control other applications - for example, you can create a script that, when you double-click on it, grabs all the files in a certain folder, loads them into (say) Canvas, or Quark, or even Finder, has that application do a bunch of things to each file, and then save them out to another folder, or maybe FTP them to a remote machine. (Photoshop 7 isn't scriptable out of the box, but you can download a patch from Adobe that makes it scriptable.) If you do any repetitive work, AppleScript can make your life a lot easier.
First, you need to install the December 2001 Developer Tools, if you haven't already. (There's apparently an April 2002 Dev Tools in the works, too, so keep your eyes open!). Get a free <a href="http://developer.apple.com/membership/online.html"; target="_blank">ADC Online Membership</a>. Then you should pick up O'Reilly's excellent <a href="http://www.powells.com/search/DTSearch/search?kw=AppleScript+in+a+Nutshell&pokey=skeptopo tamus" target="_blank">AppleScript in a Nutshell</a> book - it's a reference, not a tutorial, but quite valuable. Subscribe to Apple's <a href="http://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/applescript-users"; target="_blank">AppleScript users</a> and <a href="http://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/applescript-studio"; target="_blank">AppleScript Studio</a> lists - there are a lot of helpful people there, including Apple employees, and there's all kinds of good stuff in the archives. (You might want to set your email client to filter them into their own folders, though - they're busy!) Bill Cheeseman runs a great site called the <a href="http://www.applescriptsourcebook.com/home.html"; target="_blank">AppleScript Sourcebook</a>, and Apple themselves have a <a href="http://www.apple.com/applescript/"; target="_blank">very nice site</a> devoted to AppleScript, with tutorials, a lot of sample scripts you can download and look at and play with, and links to many other resources.
The #1 rule of learning to write code is that you learn by doing: You can read all you want, but you won't really understand until you've actually tried to implement what you've read. Try modifying other people's scripts and see what happens. Take risks. Make changes just to see what happens. Don't worry about making mistakes, either. Everyone does, and (unlike OS 9, which would crash literally 8-10 times an hour if I was chasing down a nasty bug) OS X won't blink even if you screw up in a pretty major way.
Happy hacking.
[ 04-24-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>