Re: Applescript editor recommendations?
Re: Applescript editor recommendations?
- Subject: Re: Applescript editor recommendations?
- From: email@hidden (Michael Sullivan)
- Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 14:39:30 -0500
- Organization: Business Card Express
>
Just starting in on Applescript (altho have C,Pascal,Perl,HTML etc
>
experience).
>
In the short time i have been learning, it is clear that i will
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eventually need a more complete Script Editor than Apple's own.
>
Does anyone out there dare to make a recommendation?
Script Debugger.
If you're going to do a lot of scripting and your desires in an
environment are anything like mine, it's very hard to imagine anything
beating it.
FaceSpan has an editor, but is primarily useful for it's additional
interface front end features. If you need them, you may still be able
to access them while using another editor, I'm not sure, I haven't
played with it much. Most of my applescript interface is provided by
interaction with OneClick or attachable applications, and I'm figuring
on using ASStudio when I move to X.
SD has a really nice source level debugger, everything is layed out
intelligently and designed for maximum customizability (it is completely
attachable, for instance). You get object explorers which allow you to
view complex hierarchical objects (such as a QXP page or box) as you
might view a file hierarchy in the Finder. These work both in the
dictionary, and on things like the result, or your property list (all
the variables you use) in debugging mode.
It appears to have all the power of really good programmer's debugging
environments but in a very easy to learn interface. It took me many
hours of working in CodeWarrior to be able to do even half of what I
could do in SD 15 minutes after reading the manual.
I cannot recommend Script Debugger highly enough. If you script a
couple hours a day or more, it is easily worth 3-4 times its $200 price
tag.
And that's even considering that a very good free editor, Smile, is
available, which I would heartily recommend if you don't script all that
much but run into problems with Script Editor.
They are built with very different philosophies though. I've never done
much functional programming and Smile appears to be built along the
lines of a LISP machine, where SD is built like a declarative language's
debugger. Someone who has done a lot of work in functional languages
might actually prefer Smile, but not me, even though I liked it a lot.
I used Smile for a while and grew to like some of it's features (it is
also completely attachable and very customizable). It's built to
compile and run code fragments for very easy testing, and in this way
very nearly eliminates the need for any kind of debugging environment on
simple code (this is possible because, like most functional language
implementations -- AS is interpreted and compilation is little more than
parsing syntax).
In general, my opinion after using Smile briefly was that it didn't make
much sense to pay for a Script Editor unless it was *very* good, given
that Smile is free.
But as I got into scripts that required a lot of complicated debugging,
I hearkened to the listas cry that SD really was worth trying for havey
users of AS. And it's a mark of just how good it is, that I agree it's
well worth the money, even with a good free editor available.
It is possible that if you have a very different programming background
than I (many BASICs and some assemblers, just enough pascal to hate it,
C and some C++), that you might even prefer Smile.
But Great Kudos to Late Night on SD. I can hardly imagine anything I'd
do differently or add except the compile and run a selection feature of
Smile.
Michael
--
Michael Sullivan
Business Card Express of CT Thermographers to the Trade
Cheshire, CT email@hidden