Re: Smile [well, it was about that, but not anymore]
Re: Smile [well, it was about that, but not anymore]
- Subject: Re: Smile [well, it was about that, but not anymore]
- From: Cal <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 05:55:07 -0500
What I've learned over the years is that everyone's got an opinion,
some stronger than others.
Ed Stockly and Cris conversed:
>> Scripter is closer to the Script Editor interface than either Smile
>> or SD (another fine product).
> Why should Scripter be closer on Script Editor than Script Debugger? Seems
> i miss the Run and Rec buttons somewhere:
Yes, Scripter does not have those two buttons, but overall, I believe the
Script Debugger interface is further from Script Editor than Scripter.
Although it's probably closer than Smile.
Hmmm. I wouldn't say that Scripter's interface is "closer" to Script
Editor than SD...(and I designed Scripter). I do feel that
Scripter's interface, while not big on prettiness, is the cleanest
and simplest of all three Script Editor replacements. As I said last
year, Scripter's interface is a bit deceptive in that it doesn't
appear as powerful as it is. Personally, I like that...I'm not a big
fan of "everything should be visible at all times" concept -- and you
wouldn't be happy with how cluttered the interface would be if we did
that. My feeling is that tools should be simple and clean...and when
you want all those extra power tools, they are accessible with a
extra key (option, shift, etc.) held down when double-clicking, etc.
It's my preference for design (and it's not everyone's).
After all, there have to be some discoveries when you read the manual
or the help system. :^)
> > Scripter doesn't compile a script automatically when the user
choose to run
or save it, instead giving always an error message. Script Debugger and
Script Editor does.
Scripter does not save an uncompiled script without asking the user if
that's what they want to do. It's not an error message, it gives you a
option to save as text or compile and then save. With Script Editor you can
only save a script as text if it won't compile. I prefer having the option
to save an uncompiled script as text.
I've been looking into alternative ways to handle this in Scripter.
I feel that the Script Editor's way produces unnecessary extra
compiling and warnings if you have a compile error and you try to
save it again, you'll compile the script again and get warned again.
The idea was to avoid that extra compilation (particularly annoying
on scripts that are 500-1000 lines).
It does automatically compile a script when you Step or Run.
Even so, is automatic compiling such a big issue? It's a difference of
hitting a single keystrong (the enter key) before running/saving.
This to me is the point. It's one keypress.
> Scripter does not compile larger lists or &-statements. Script Debugger and
Script Editor do.
I've compiled scripts with huge lists in Scripter, I'm not sure what you're
claiming here. Could you send me an example offline?
Yes, and could you send that to me, along with an example of the
&-statements (in private email) as well? Thanks.
> But more important as an comparison how close an editor is on Apples Script
Editor is the fact that Main Event is very unresponsive in removing all the
small bad things that bother scripters every day. The 2.5 update (fee) has
covered nothing what was really important for the daily use. Very
> disappointing to see an actually really good tool in such a state.
Cris, I think it's fair to say that these "small bad things" bother
_you_ every day. If there were problems that bothered everybody than
our product would not be in such wide use. I know you've emailed me
before with a few problems...I am going back to review your list
again.
[I feel it prudent to let the readers of this list know that, in the
past, if Cris had problems with Scripter, he would only publicly
wrote about the problems and would not mention that he liked the
product; he felt that it's not his job. Fair enough, that's his
choice...I just wanted the readers of this list to be aware of this.]
And as far as the 2.5 update goes, it has the Object Prober for
looking at live objects and their properties (roughly equivalent to
SD's Inspector but operates differently), the ability to search
dictionaries looking for terms, and a few other improvements. These
may not make a difference to you, Cris, but you can bet that they do
to others.
I was very pleased with 2.5 and short of changes which would require a major
overhall, I'd say Cal has has done a good job meeting the needs of the
largest number of AppleScripters.
As Ed says, we've made a great deal of changes over the years...and
there are a couple of things that we can't change without rewriting
large parts. As I've said many times before, there are a few things
that Scripter can't do: for example, handling _very_ large scripts
(in my estimate, less than 2 percent of scripters ever get close to
this, so unless you're one of these people, it'll never be a
problem), and it's not yet scriptable (in my estimate, 2-5 percent of
scripters would ever use this)...(and these estimates come from
having contact with large numbers of scripters -- I meet between 500
and 1000 scripters every year). But OTOH, Scripter does a lot of
things that no other product can do (comparison charts really can't
tell the story).
Cris continued:
At the end, there is no editor that unites all good things that every of
these programs has.
Yes. No single product can be all things to all people. To me, the
proof of the pudding is that while scripters use a variety of tools,
of the professionals (those that use AppleScript day after day in
their jobs, in the trenches) who use something beyond the Script
Editor, more of them use Scripter more of the time. The same goes
for casual scripters. From what I've seen, of the people who favor
SD, more (but not all) are programmers that also write scripts
(although a lot of programmers use Scripter as well).
Stephen, if money is no issue, buy Scripter. Use Smile or Script Debugger
for your projects that are larger than 32 KB and Scripter for small projects
or just to debug small snippets.
Most good scripters can get most of what they want done in scripts
each containing several hundred lines or less. As I've said in past
months, many scripts that are 32K are longer can be distilled down to
a much smaller size. So I'd amend your statement to say "and
Scripter for all but the hugest projects or to seriously debug."
Both Scripter and SD have debuggers with different features. Not
everyone needs to use everything, but there are advanced things you
can do very simply in debugging with Scripter that you can't do
anywhere else.
As to which interface is better, I don't know if one is better; they
use different approaches. There are things in the interface of
Scripter that streamline the process of writing scripts, beginning
with having the result appear in the same window as the script. Yes,
there are differences between products, plain and simple.
I'd say that, if money isn't much of an issue, buy Scripter. (If
money really is no issue at all, buy everything.) And if money is an
issue, buy Scripter PE.
Cal