Beginning Mac OS® X Programming

12.2. AppleScript Studio

Apple has provided a means for you to leverage the power of the Cocoa frameworks from AppleScript: AppleScript Studio. AppleScript Studio is not actually a single program or library; rather, it is a collection of tools that includes applications such as Xcode and Interface Builder. These tools provide the development environment you use for building AppleScript applications.

Of course, development tools are not very useful if AppleScript and Cocoa can't "talk" to one another. So a bridge has been built between the two, allowing you to create and manipulate Cocoa objects from AppleScript. The AppleScript-Cocoa bridge forms the centerpiece of AppleScript Studio. It largely succeeds in protecting the AppleScript programmer from the complexities of Cocoa, while still facilitating access to the lion's share of functionality.

In this section, you learn all about the facilities in Xcode and Interface Builder for writing AppleScript applications, as well as how you use the AppleScript-Cocoa bridge. An extensive Try It Out example demonstrates how you write complete applications with AppleScript and take advantage of AppleScript's greatest strength—scripting other applications.

12.2.1. The AppleScript-Cocoa Bridge

The AppleScript-Cocoa bridge allows you to develop complete Cocoa applications in AppleScript, without having to know anything about the Objective-C programming language (see Chapter 7). To achieve this, the bridge effectively mirrors Cocoa objects in ...