Book recommendations?

[drukepple]

Hey all, just wondering if anyone had any book recommendations for learning AppleScript Studio. I was surprised that searching on “AppleScript Studio” at amazon.com turned up only one book, and it’s not even released yet. Is AS Studio that obscure of a thing that book publishers haven’t picked up on it yet? Is there a market there waiting to be monopolized?

Anyway, I’ve read through the Programming Guide, which was rather helpful in getting my feet wet, and i’m working my way through the Terminology Reference, which is rather dull, but still very helpful in terms of seeing what’s there and gaining a 10,000 foot view of the class architecture. After that, though, I’m not sure where to go. I’m an avid book reader/learner, I usually get the quickest start in something when I can read a book or three. Playing around is obviously the best way to learn stuff, but I need a book or something to sort of expose the possibilities and some of the not-so-obvious features and capabilities.

So, if anyone’s got recommendations, I’m all ears!

Thanks!

[Kevin_Bradley]

AS Studio hasn’t gotten nearly as much press as I feel it should. I, like you, searched for books on the subject but couldn’t find anything. There is one book aimed mostly at Obj-C programmers about using XCode, “Step Into XCode” that has a very short section on AS Studio.

If you have been through the programming guide, I suggest you go ahead and get your feet wet and try building a simple app. Also, there are a bunch of examples in /Developer/Examples/AppleScript Studio. They cover the basics of most of the commonly used controls. Also, there are things in Scriptbuilders that have source code included.

I would love for AS Studio to get as popular as Visual Basic was for Windows 95. You can do an awful lot in AS Studio and produce apps that are genuine Mac OS X applications. But very few people know about it.

If you get stuck or have questions, we have some gurus here that will help you. They’ve helped me a lot and I also try to “put back into the system.” We all help each other, it’s really amazing the amount of talent and expertise that is located here at MacScripter. And the help system in XCode is pretty darned good as well.

In the end, the only way to do it is to do it. You’ll have to gather resources from here, Apple’s Developer Connection (get a free account, it’s worth it), the AppleScript mailing lists at Apple, and whatever else you can find. Right now, until there are some books, that’s the only way to learn.

I hope to see you back here soon, frustrated and cursing, posting “How do you do this?”-kind of questions. For all the difficulties, the feeling you’ll get the first time you compile and run something of your own is worth all the hassle. It will feed your soul the same way that applause does for an actor.

Good luck, and we are all rooting for you.

[drukepple]

Thanks, Kevin…trying to dive in and get my head around how all those classes work, and how Xcode/Interface Builder works…it’s a lot to take in all at once!

Things are frustrating, but I keep at them and eventually figure something out…but rest assured that I’ll be making full of this forum! It was a forum kinda like this that helped me learn ActionScript, and right now I kind of feel like how I felt back in those “early Flash” days…so much to learn, so little time, so much frustration. But all very good…I’m pretty excited about building “real” applications (as opposed to the “applications” I build in Flash). Already have a few ideas, but first…the Table View!

And I agree…seems like for as pretty durn cool as AS Studio is, there are far too few books and resources for it. It’s probably one of this chicken/egg things. No one knows about it, so why waste resources writing a book, but if books were written and more sites dedicated to it, then people would know about it, right?

Anyway…off to the forums again to post a question…