AppleScript - Natural Language Metaphor

Natural Language Metaphor

Whereas Apple Events are a way to send messages into applications, AppleScript is a particular language designed to send Apple Events. In keeping with the Mac OS tradition of ease-of-use, the AppleScript language is designed on the natural language metaphor, just as the graphical user interface is designed on the desktop metaphor. A well-written AppleScript should be clear enough to be read and understood by anyone, and easily edited. The language is based largely on HyperCard's HyperTalk language, extended to refer not only to the HyperCard world of cards and stacks, but also theoretically to any document. To this end, the AppleScript team introduced the AppleEvent Object Model (AEOM), which specifies the objects any particular application "knows".

The heart of the AppleScript language is the use of terms that act as nouns and verbs that can be combined. For example, rather than a different verb to print a page, document or range of pages (printPage, printDocument, printRange) AppleScript uses a single "print" verb which can be combined with an object, such as a page, a document or a range of pages.

print page 1 print document 2 print pages 1 thru 5 of document 2

Generally, AEOM defines a number of objects—like "document" or "paragraph"--and corresponding actions—like "cut" and "close". The system also defines ways to refer to properties of objects, so one can refer to the "third paragraph of the document 'Good Day'", or the "color of the last word of the front window". AEOM uses an application dictionary to associate the Apple Events with human-readable terms, allowing the translation back and forth between human-readable AppleScript and bytecode Apple Events. To discover what elements of a program are scriptable, dictionaries for supported applications may be viewed. (In the Xcode and Script Editor applications, this is under File → Open Dictionary.)

To designate which application is meant to be the target of such a message, AppleScript uses a "tell" construct:

tell application "Microsoft Word" quit end tell

Alternatively, the tell may be expressed in one line by using an infinitive:

tell application "Microsoft Word" to quit

For events in the "Core Suite" (activate, open, reopen, close, print, and quit), the application may be supplied as the direct object to transitive commands:

quit application "Microsoft Word"

The concept of an object hierarchy can be expressed using nested blocks:

tell application "QuarkXPress" tell document 1 tell page 2 tell text box 1 set word 5 to "Apple" end tell end tell end tell end tell

The concept of an object hierarchy can also be expressed using nested prepositional phrases:

pixel 7 of row 3 of TIFF image "my bitmap"

which in another programming language might be expressed as sequential method calls:

getTIFF("my bitmap").getPixel(3,7);

AppleScript includes syntax for ordinal counting, "the first paragraph", as well as cardinal, "paragraph one". Likewise, the numbers themselves can be referred to as text or numerically, "five", "fifth" and "5" are all supported, they are called synonyms. Also, to add to the English-likeness, the word "the" can legally be used anywhere in the script in order to enhance readability: it has no effect on the functionality of the script.