>> "Kathryn Tate" wrote:
>>> I am jumping the gun a little here. Is it possible to develop an
>>> application which lends itself to a palette
>>> whereby the user can select, say, an image container or a text
>>> field?--rather like
>>> a diagraming program?
Gary wrote:
>> Yes. Have a look to Smile, a complete AppleScript development and
>> operating
>> environment. Smile is made and distributed (freely) by Satimage
>> Software.
>>
>> You can create system-wide palettes, application-specific palettes,
>> full-fledged dialog-based applications and so forth.
"Luther Fuller" wrote:
> I am aware that Smile will let you create dialogs, although it has
> been quite a while since I tried using them.
> They seem only to work
> on a system where Smile is also installed, however, which is a big
> problem.
Not accurate.
> Or, perhaps I missed something ?
Yes, you missed something. ;) (Welcome to my world.)
Smile's dialogs can be (automatically, inside Smile) made into stand-alone
applications, which do not require a separate installation of the Smile
engine.
If one is going to make many Smile-based applications, it is more efficient
to simply install Smile once and then write many tools for it. This is
because a Smile-app does contain the primary Smile engine inside its bundle.
If you were to "ship" (distribute) more than one of these, it's byte-cheaper
to install Smile and make life easy for everyone.
--
Gary
But, that said...
Applications get installed. There's no interesting difference in writing a
Cocoa app and having a user install it versus writing a set of scripts which
use Smile and having the user install Smile along with the scripts.
Even /if/ Smile didn't provide a stand-alone bundling mechanism, there would
still be no reason NOT to use Smile. Smile is free and can become the basis
for ALL AppleScripts on a network or system, so, I do not have a problem
with the practice of installing Smile as a standard component on every
system.
[Smile is much like an entire AppleScript OS.] [Smile is not just a
substitute for Script Editor or ScriptDebugger. It's a different beast
entirely, with a different purpose, albeit with some of the same functions
as those tools. I do wish Smile had a better debugging environment, but
hey...Smile is free, it's über-stable, its developers are always available
and are always improving Smile's engine.]
In fact, really, many "small" applications that I download are just bloated
wrappers around some basic AppleScript or shell functionality. It's "easier"
maybe to make sure a user can double-click and go, but that's an easily
automated process anyway.
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
AppleScript-Users mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/applescript-users/email@hidden
Archives: http://lists.apple.com/archives/applescript-users
This email sent to email@hidden
