Software Development how to automate somthing

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but right now im getting in to software development, im learning java and c++.

How would i go about automating somthing.

What would the proccess involve?

A problem i had the other day was the notes.app program on the mac didnt have an export function for the notes themselves however i got around this by manually printing each note to a PDF one at a time.

If and when i advance a bit more in SD - how would one tackle this kind of issue to select a note, bring up the print dialog change it to a pdf and then save and then do it for the next one. ideally invisibly without too much eye candy happening on screen, e.g windows popping up, buttons being pressed by the computer and then the windows closing.

You could use Google to find something like this: http://lifehacker.com/5668648/automate-just-about-an...

I notice you mention Mac but this a Windows forum

The proper way to do it would be to see if there is an API for the application to allow you to call the appropriate function. If not then you are almost down to screen scrape type technologies which are not likely to work well in the modern graphical world.

Or you directly access the data file to read the data and write it in a new format - that is unlikely to be easy though assuming that they are probably using proprietary and unpublished file formats.

The best way to automate Mac applications is to use AppleScript. Most applications can be controlled that way.