Re: Smile dialogs
Re: Smile dialogs
- Subject: Re: Smile dialogs
- From: Paul Berkowitz <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 10:51:39 -0800
On 11/24/00 10:16 AM, "Jason W. Bruce" <email@hidden> wrote:
>
You call Smile dialogs by path name.
<snip>
Jason,
Your commentary on Smile is very useful, and your discussion of Smile
dialogs (which I haven't played with yet myself) particularly instructive.
I'm wondering a bit about the following:
>
For me, the biggest problem
>
with Smile's debugging features is that you debug in text windows as opposed
>
to script windows. Because variables in text windows have global scope and
>
persistence, which is what allows you to debug them, you sometimes have to
>
make changes to the script when transferring it between a text window and a
>
script window. This means that you're not debugging your actual script, but
>
rather a copy of a portion of your script.
I haven't found much of a problem with this, except when trying to use the
"enter whole handler" feature. That's where you're meant to be able to to
enter an entire handler which is then treated as a single variable when
debugging in a main script. The trouble is that if it contains references to
global variables or properties, it will have to include the word "my" before
any such reference if the global or property is first defined in the main
script (or, rather more cumbersome but also quite rare, the "my" will have
to be in the main script instead if a global variable is first defined in
the handler). But since just leaving in the "my" in the handler, rather than
removing it when transferring to a script window, doesn't in fact cause any
problems, I'm wondering when and where you ever have to rewrite a script
when transferring it to a script window. Can you give an example? I do not
recall ever having had to do this, and I have written several hundred
scripts in Smile. I'm wondering what you might mean.
I find the debugging capabilities of Smile excellent, although every word
you say about the learning curve and the poor documentation is spot on.
People interested in Smile may want to check the review in
<
http://www.AppleScriptSourcebook.com/index.html> (written by Peter Fine and
myself, to declare an interest) where we tried to remedy this to some extent
by providing a more detailed, and hopefully clearer, documentation for some
of Smile's basic functions than Smile itself offers. One thing not mentioned
there, which will eventually be remedied in an update, is that the global
persistence of variables is only true in text windows targeted to the same
application, or to none. That applies of course also to entire handlers. If
you want to avail yourself of Smile's debugging capabilities, you must enter
the variable or handler in a text window whose application context is the
same as the script you're debugging.
>
And
>
while the developer of Smile used to participate more frequently on this
>
list, I haven't seen a post from him in quite awhile.
Emmanuel Levy is guarding his time available to work on Smile (he has been
carbonizing Smile for OS X, and is also planning a major update soon to
Smile 1.8) by no longer subscribing to this mailing list nor to MacScrpt.
But he is every bit as generous with his time to Smile users as he has
always been both on Smile's own mailing list:
email@hidden
with [SUL] in the subject
and if you write him privately at the same address, without [SUL] in the
subject. I have never known anyone to be so generous - and pleasant and
witty to boot - as Emmanuel, in giving help with a product, let alone a free
one.
--
Paul Berkowitz