YES, I AGREE WITH YOU. APPLESCRIPT CAN DRIVE ME CRAZY TRYING TO FIND OUT HOW TO DO THE SIMPLEST THINGS.
You’ve articulated my frustration very well. I can’t go to a single place and find the answer to my many questions. I spend very much time doing lengthy searches for a snippet of code here and a technique there to make my simple scripts run.
That said, I use AS because its often the simplest and best way to do what I need, ONCE I discover the correct syntax or technique.
It is what it is. I could definitely be better, but it’s also definitely the best way to do certain things.
I’m gonna check out the O’Reilly book mentioned above. Maybe it’ll calm me down…
Your problem isn’t with AppleScript. It’s with application developers who don’t provide nearly enough documentation on how to control their applications. An application dictionary alone provides maybe half the essential information needed to script it, and while some applications are very good at supplying additional documentation (e.g. InDesign), in many cases that’s all you get.
If this bothers you, file a feature request with the developer indicating what information is missing and politely asking them to address this. It lets them know that users are A. very interested in this feature, and B. not yet satisfied with the quality of its presentation. If a developer gets lots of these requests they’ll be much more likely to do something about it than if they hear nothing at all.