I agree that the semantic distinction is very tenuous. However, I disclaim any ownership or responsibility for it - it's not *my* distinction. It's a marketing distinction, and personally I find it not only a patently false distinction but also an intentionally misleading one - "AppleScript is easy, not like those other guys! You'll be up and running and doing really cool things and being super productive with AppleScript in *no time*." That may in fact be true in some cases, but it doesn't mean that you'll be doing any of those things well.
If a language is Turing complete, it's a programming language. I have no idea what a 'scripting' language is.
-jeff
Having been in the industry for a long time, and seen things develop and seen terms come into use, I would describe a scripting language as one where typed-in interactive command lines can be saved in some way as a 'script' to be be run later. This excludes AppleScript from being a scripting language because there is no interactive environment to 'script'. OTOH many people use perl as their command shell on Unix systems.
Personally I've never got started with AppleScript - it's just too complicated to bother with. The sooner 'Project Builder' can create perl or shell projects directly the better.
David
-- David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK. Chair of SysAdmin SIG of HP/Works technical user group (www.hpworks.org.uk) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (also [EMAIL PROTECTED]) www.ivdcs.co.uk
