OS X Automator: two Neuberg articles

Matt Neuberg has two complementary articles out on Automator:

• MacDevCenter.com: Write Your Own Automator Actions
• Macworld: Secrets: Take Control of Customizing Tiger: Automator
  (excerpt from the $5 ebook -- link at end of article)
  

A prolific contributor, he also has now slightly dated JavaScript book. The reviews for the book, by the way, are very helpful. It appears to be an excellent book for someone with programming experience, albeit not necessarily JavaScript experience.

Automator, it turns out, is basically a visual form of the UNIX (and DOS) "pipe", a channel from one piece of code to another. It does do intelligent type transformations -- that's not easy! It's not a true workflow application (yet); there are no branches or loops. It is clearly influenced by the past decade of workflow application development. AppleScript codes can serve as Automator elements. I don't know if one can "compile" an Automator sequence into a single standalone block.