Sad State Of AppleScripts: Few Free, Few Worthy.

handell said:

I’ve used applescript from day one; as a production graphic artist on commission, I was able to increase my salary 33% with just one elaborate script. I must admit it was no easy task as I began just fiddling around with the early tedious versions of applescript.

What started as a curiosity led me to more intense structured scripts. I would get into the many 3rd party plug ins and developer apps for creating applet interfaces such as FaceSpan or similar. 

During OS 9 and less.  Many things could not be controlled with all the applications dictionaries so I used an applescript menu plugins. This allowed me to manipulate many applications that where never intended to be scriptable. The problem with this is similar to what Tera says above, Its hard to run on any other machine unless you have an installer and then there’s plenty of bugs associated with that as well.

My script applet would be the puppet master of many applications utilizing the Finder, Adobe Illustrator, Explorer, BBedit and more. II poured many hours into the development of these specific isolated company functions only to find out that NONE of these scripts, 3rd party apps and plugin helpers worked in the new operating systems os x.

After this I got disgusted and moved into a new position in my company where applescript was no longer necessary to me. I abandoned the whole idea of automation. Now I was in a concept design position where I no longer need to worry about repetitive tasks, Right?. Well maybe not entirely.

The thing is I still had to be around my production team and to watch them waste valuable time doing things in an applecript free zone bothered me contantly. Three years later and purely out of bordum, in my spare time I started rewriting just a few helper scripts when I discovered that the Applescript Studio was now a free download from the Apple developer website. Now I could create cross platform scripts with an awesome easy to create graphical interface. This fuel my interest back up.

I have been writing many applets utilzing Adobe CS3 and Photoshop CS3. mostly variable name and photo drop applets that make Days even weeks worth of production work automate with insane speed and accuracy. Hundreds of digital files can be outputed within minutes without the element of human error. Sizes, file types,  color profiles, document names etc. are as originally directed by the script. Insane lists of personalizations can be processed and added to standard template layouts and so on.

The hardest thing about applecript is learning the dictionarys, definitions of all the various applications. I can pretty much manipulate any element of Photoshop and Illustrator. As for making money writing applecript, I doubt if you could make a living at it. However the scripts written can be quite valuable to the individual who saved themselves from getting carpal tunnel syndrome. lol.

As mentioned above, any scripts that Ive written are really oly useful to me and my companies needs. They were written specifically to meet the needed of production and our printing techniques. Other than our competitors, I doubt there be a use for my scripts, and Im not sharing to them.

If any one reading this have a need for Document, Image or text file manipulation using applecripts, they can contact me at ‘tim@tmgraphics.biz’. I have some applets that may help.