<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>[TxMt] Re: Changing the Script Editor</title></head><body> <div>At 9:32 AM -0500 11/16/06, Jacob Rus wrote:</div> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Adam Bell wrote: <blockquote type="cite" cite> Allan Odgaard wrote: <blockquote type="cite" cite>You would need to change that to address your preferred tool instead of Script Editor.</blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><br> Thanks, but that's an osascript targeted at the Script Editor. Unfortunately, Script Debugger 4 (an OS X upgrade) is not yet scriptable, so it's not on, I guess - the osascript will just bomb (A failing of SD4, clearly, not TextMate,</blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><br> Kinda ironic, eh?</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>It is indeed. In the pre-OS X versions it was extremely scriptable, but hasn't caught up.</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite><br> <blockquote type="cite" cite>but reduces the value of TextMate to me and it's around $60 Cdn).</blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><br> Hmm, I hope this doesn't end up preventing you from using TextMate. I'm sure we can work around things. I made the applescript bundle, and personally don't find the "compile in script editor" command very useful, as Script Editor is kinda limited, and I can just run all my scripts from within TextMate.</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>What attracted me to TextMate in the first place was its extensibility, and the fact that BBEdit is getting a bit long in the tooth. It seemed to me that I could substantially automate several things I do with it in a much more direct fashion than is possible with SD4. I've also been interested in Cameron Hayne's development of ASH (AppleScriptShell); http://www.hayne.net/MacDev/Ash/</div> <div>and noting that TextMate uses a lot of bash scripts in its bundles, there might be a marriage there.</div> <div><br></div> <div>But what makes Script Debugger so powerful is the amount of information about what's going on that it reveals, and it's very handy palettes. According to the developer, SD4 is a mixed app - "Script Debugger 4 is a Cocoa application. It does make use of many Carbon services, but the user interface and text editor are all based on Cocoa."</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite><br> But if you're interested in this, I'm positive we could get it working in Script Debugger using UI scripting. If you can't figure it out, I'm willing to lend a hand.<br> <br> Otherwise, the Edit in TextMate input manager is really nice.<br> </blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Until TM 2.0, editing applescripts using TextMate isn't really ideal, because AppleScript is too stupid to understand UTF-8 *.applescript files. So to actually use the scripts you make with TM, you either have to dump them into Script Editor (or SD or whatever) and save a compiled script (recommended for several reasons, including that AppleScript compiles scripts incredibly slowly, and needs to open all referenced applications to do so), or else either convert things to macroman before running them, or just avoid non-ascii characters (like Ź).</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>Ź is an acceptable character in the Script Editor and SD4.</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite><br> For TextMate 2.0, we should be able to pass things like *.scpt files through a filter on the way into and out of TextMate, which can convert compiled scripts °Í text. At that point, Script Editor can be taken completely out of the workflow.<br> <blockquote type="cite" cite>TextMate isn't very scriptable, but I'll try to write a copy/paste routine to get there.</blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><br> Hmm, what exactly is your purpose here? I can't really recommend trying to use AppleScript from within TM, unless it's for scripting other apps. You are much better off using a TextMate command, which also puts any language on the system at your fingertips (python, ruby, perl, bash, etc.).[^1]</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>My purpose isn't very clear to me either. TextMate seems very powerful and flexible and I wanted to explore what it could do. I didn't even know it supported AppleScript until I first ran it; I was more interested in formatting a series of articles for the web that contain embedded AppleScripts (I edit the cover of http://macscripter.net), and was curious whether I could do a better job of formatting the AS than the tag engine on the site does (MacScripter and its forum understand [applescript], [/applescript] tags and format the script with a link that will download it directly to the user's default script editor).</div> <div><br></div> <div>Ahh, but I'm an amateur - a retired Dean of Engineering so I don't know any of those except a smattering of bash. I did teach for a bunch of years in your neighborhood, though - Just down Mass Ave at MIT - left to come here in Admin.</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Anyway, If you want to make a TextMate command which runs an applescript, that is quite possible too. I'm going to make a screencast hopefully soon that shows this in action.</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>Look forward to it.</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite><br> * * *<br> <br> Anyway, I do hope you'll stick with TextMate. Once you get into the snippets/commands, and the scopes/scope selectors system, I think you'll find it's the most ingenious, intuitive, and easily hackable text editor on the market.</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>I've got 28 more days to play - hopefully I'll get time to explore.</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite><br> If you have suggestions for improvements to the AppleScript bundle, I'm all ears. I only use AppleScript when I'm forced to (e.g. to interact with random apps on the system), and though I like to think I understand the language pretty well from reading all the way through the docs that Apple has posted online, I'm definitely not a seasoned expert. TextMate so far hasn't really had too many AppleScripters using it, as far as I know, and there wasn't any bundle for it at all for the first year and a half TextMate existed. So picking up some people who actually know what they're doing can only be good for the bundle, assuming they're willing to contribute ideas, and preferably code too.</blockquote> <div><br> Haven't studied it, but will.<br> </div> <blockquote type="cite" cite><br> I tried to take a look at Script Debugger at some point, but I can't really get into the mental model of the app. But that's true of AppleScript stuff in general... :) If there are any particular problems solved by features of Script Debugger which we should try to solve in TextMate, please speak up.<br> <br> -Jacob Rus<br> </blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>[^1]: The only downside to TextMate's lack of scriptability that I can see is that it makes it harder for other apps to tell TM to do things. But if/when TextMate does become truly scriptable in this way, I sure hope it's not AppleScript that's the scripting language used ;).<br> </blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>Thanks for the extended response.</div> <div><br></div> <div>Adam</div> </body> </html>