History
The AppleScript project was an outgrowth of the (now discontinued) HyperCard project. HyperCard contained an English language-based scripting language called HyperTalk, which could be used to program a HyperCard stack. Apple engineers recognized that a similar scripting language could be designed to be used with any application, and the AppleScript project was born as part of System 7.
AppleScript was released in October 1993 as part of System 7.1.1 (System 7 Pro, the first major upgrade to System 7). QuarkXPress (ver. 3.2) was one of the first major software applications that supported AppleScript. This in turn led to AppleScript being widely adopted within the publishing and prepress world, often tying together complex workflows. This was a key factor in retaining the Macintosh's dominant position in publishing and prepress, even after QuarkXpress and other publishing applications were ported to Microsoft Windows.
After some uncertainty about the future of AppleScript on Apple's next generation OS, the move to Mac OS X (around 2002) and its Cocoa frameworks greatly increased the usefulness and flexibility of AppleScript. Cocoa applications allow application developers to implement basic scriptability for their apps with minimal effort, broadening the number of applications that are directly scriptable. At the same time, the shift to the Unix underpinnings and AppleScript's ability to run Unix commands directly allowed AppleScripts much greater control over the operating system itself. AppleScript Studio, released with Mac OS X 10.2 as part of Xcode, and later AppleScriptObjC framework, released in Mac OS X 10.6, allows users to build native Cocoa applications using AppleScript.
AppleScript is one component of Mac OS X Automation technologies, along with Services and Automator.
Read more about this topic: AppleScript
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of the prophets. He saw with an open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)