William J. Cheeseman, Principal

bill@cheeseman.name


P.O. Box 326

547 Greeley Shunpike

Quechee, VT 05059-0326


tel 802 295-9120

  1. Mac OS X Cocoa application development

  2. AppleScript and GUI Scripting development

Contact Quechee Software for Mac OS X application development in Objective-C using Apple's Cocoa frameworks, or to outsource your AppleScript and GUI Scripting projects. We offer reasonable rates and unparalleled experience and expertise.

Publications:

Apple Training Series: AppleScript 1-2-3
   By Sal Soghoian and Bill Cheeseman
   Peachpit Press 2009

A self-paced guide to learning AppleScript, Apple’s system-level scripting language. Co-written as part of the Apple Training Series with the long-time product manager for automation technologies at Apple, the legendary Sal Soghoian. Read online copies of the first chapter and the Finding Scriptable Objects chapter.

Cocoa Recipes for Mac OS X:

  The Vermont Recipes (Second Edition)
   By Bill Cheeseman
   Peachpit Press 2010

A practical, no-nonsense, hands-on, step-by-step tutorial, walking you through the details of building a complete Cocoa application for Mac OS X from start to finish using the Objective-C programming language. Written for Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).


The book is currently a work in process. You can now purchase online access to it on Rough Cuts at Safari Books Online. The printed book will be published by Peachpit in early 2010.


The original Web-based version of The Vermont Recipes was written for the Developer Preview version of Mac OS X 10.0 (Cheetah). It was published in 2000 on the Stepwise Web site, and many Cocoa developers first learned how to write applications for Mac OS X using The Vermont Recipes. The First Edition was subsequently published in printed book form in 2003 by Peachpit (see the next entry, below). The Second Edition is a complete rewrite with all-new content.

The AppleScript Scorecard Guidelines
   By Cal Simone and Bill Cheeseman
   MacTech Magazine, Vol. 14, No. 2, April 1998

Guidelines for designing proper AppleScript terminology dictionaries, still valid and important after all these years.

The ultimate assistant for Apple's GUI Scripting technology, UI Browser helps you to explore, manipulate and monitor the user interface of most Mac OS X applications. It understands the arrangement of their user interface elements and enables you, with a single click, to generate useful AppleScript statements to control and automate them. We wrote this Cocoa application in collaboration with PreFab Software, Inc.

Applications:

UI Actions implements "universal attachability" for AppleScript. With UI Actions, you attach an AppleScript script to a native Mac OS X application. From then on, the script will be triggered automatically every time the user performs the actions you specify in the target application. A UI Action script can respond to all manner of user actions, such as opening or closing a window, selecting a menu item, editing a text field and many others. We wrote this Cocoa application in collaboration with PreFab Software, Inc.

A free utility to help Mac OS X developers explore Quartz event taps. With event taps, an application can monitor, respond to, and modify user input events from the keyboard, mouse, scroll wheel and tablet pointer in any application running on the computer. We wrote this Cocoa application in collaboration with PreFab Software, Inc.

Cocoa Recipes for Mac OS X:

  The Vermont Recipes (First Edition)
   By Bill Cheeseman
   Peachpit Press 2003

The First Edition’s official Web site at Stepwise is no longer available, but the Errata and the project files and source code are now available here.