AppleScript: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition

UserTalk

UserTalk is the native scripting language of UserLand Frontier and its inexpensive "little brother," Radio UserLand. Frontier is now also once again available in a free version, which is open source.

UserTalk does not read an application's dictionary in real time, the way JavaScript OSA does. In UserTalk, all terminology (not only as relates to Apple events, but the entire language) is implemented through a hierarchical namespace table called "the database." Every name in the database corresponds to a value; a value can be a string, an integer, a raw four-character code, a script written in the UserTalk language, a subtable, or any of a dozen other types of value. The namespace is navigated through dot notation, starting at the top level, which is called root. Certain nodes in the database are short-circuited, though, so that an unqualified term is sought at these points directly. English-like AppleScript terminology is implemented through the database, like everything else; to drive an application, you need a table to translate from English-like terms to four-letter codes, scripts, and so forth. This is called the glue table for that application. Construction of a glue table must be performed separately before you can start targeting a given application. The process of constructing a glue table is largely automatic (Frontier includes a script that can read an application's dictionary and generate the corresponding table), but too involved to describe here. Let's just assume, ...