README

About rb-appscript
==================

Ruby appscript (rb-appscript) is a high-level, user-friendly Apple event 
bridge that allows you to control AppleScriptable Mac OS X applications 
from Ruby.


Requirements
------------

Appscript supports Ruby 1.8 and later.

Appscript requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.


Installation
------------

To install appscript, cd to the rb-appscript-0.6.1 directory and run:

  ruby extconf.rb
  make
  make install


Building appscript from source requires the gcc compiler supplied with 
Apple's Xcode IDE. Xcode can be obtained from Mac OS X installer disks
or <http://developer.apple.com>.

Please note that the version of Ruby included with Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) 
is missing the header files needed to build appscript on PPC-based Macs. 
Tiger users can avoid this issue by installing the latest version of Ruby 
from <http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/downloads/> and updating their shell 
login profiles to suit.


Notes
-----

- rb-appscript 0.6.0+ supports string encodings in Ruby 1.9+; see the CHANGES 
  file and documentation for details.

- Developer tools for exporting application dictionaries (ASDictionary) 
  and converting application commands from AppleScript to appscript syntax 
  (ASTranslate) are available separately:

    http://appscript.sourceforge.net/tools.html

  ASDictionary 0.13.1 or later is also required to use rb-appscript's built-
  in #help method. If ASDictionary isn't installed, interactive help won't 
  be available but appscript will continue to operate as normal.


Copyright
---------

Appscript is released into the public domain, except for the following code:

- extconf.rb, which is a modified version of the RubyAEOSA/RubyOSA install 
  script; see code for details

- safeobject.rb, which is a modified version of basicobject 
  <http://facets.rubyforge.org> released under the Ruby License; 
  see code for details

- SendThreadSafe.h/SendThreadSafe.m, which are modified versions of Apple 
  code (http://developer.apple.com/samplecode/AESendThreadSafe); see code 
  for details