[cross posted to facespan]
I’m looking to build some interfaces for some applescripts that I’ve been writing. I just started learning the language recently, and I have a little bit of prior programming experience with C++ and PHP. I doubt that any of the scripts I will be writing at work will be that complex, but I would like to give them interfces beyond a bunch of display dialogs. I’ve never worked with interfaces really, just source code. We have XCode / Applescript Studio / Interface Builder at work, but I’ve found those tools to be a bit overwhelming. I want to know if FaceSpan might me easier to learn for my situation. Can anyone that has used facespan can give me a yay or nay?
I’ve never used facespan, so I’m no expert…but I’d approach this as I’d approach any educated decision. Weigh factors like it’s price, it’s features, and it’s support by both the community and the developers.
With xCode shipping free with any computer you can use it on, it seems a logical and intelligent choice. I’d rather spend nothing than $200.
With apple’s internal support and knowhow, I’d run under the assumption that xCode is going to be more robust, solid, and streamlined than other suites. It appears that facespan has many of the same features as xcode, but I’ve not looked for a detailed breakdown of what facespan supports or offers. It also appears that facespan was beat to the punch by apple in developing a feature-rich interface builder for AS under osx… as facespan appears to be a dominant force in the market prior to osx but has little support since the birth of ASStudio. Perhaps it’s remaining community support comes from legacy users who do not want to re-learn something they’ve already been through once before. It also seems that facespan is an almost exclusively applescript tool, which may prove to be a limitation if your projects move out of reach of AS. There are an increasing number of people whose dreams can not become reality with AS alone, a problem for which Studio is not only capable of producing solutions…but was designed for. It’s direct (or indirect) support for essentially ALL of osx’s supported languages is a real plus when the gaps in AS’s abilities rear their ugly heads. Although you may not see this as a real value now, you may later.
In looking within this forum for ideas on who’s using what, ASStudio seems to win that match hand’s-down. I’d think that anyone who’s anyone would be all over facespan if it were a superior tool. With 1900 posts to it’s merit, the applescript studio forum seems to topple any notion that facespan is even a player…given it’s less than 70 posts. Facespan’s own forum is similarly disheartening, with only a handful of posts for it’s osx version, and only 200 posts for it’s aging pre-osx version. Either facespan is the easiest software designed EVER, and needs no support…or it just doesn’t get used much.
As with anything, it’s your preference that counts, and those who use facespan must do so for merits they see that others do not. I’d say sticking to xCode SEEMS like a better bet, but it’s your call in the end. Yes, ASStudio is scary at first, but once the initial learning phase is over, you can bang your head over things like syntax and bugs, rather than reinventing every wheel and just making sense of all the intricacies of the app itself. The language (AS) is one of the easiest out there and the interface-builder becomes second-nature once you know where all the pockets and zippers are. As you’ll see here, there are many users who will help you in any way they can…oftentimes stuffing your pockets and zipping your zippers for you.
It seems that if your going to start learning one versus the other from “scratch”, that starting with the most supported, capable tools available would be the smart choice… despite it’s initial learning curve. Regardless of your choice, I am sure there will be (…various degrees of…) support for you here at macscripter as you take on your new projects.
Take care…
j
(NOTE: Edited 834,550,372 times for poor grammar :rolleyes:)
I “grew up” using FaceSpan (one of my apps is still featured on the FaceSpan site as a success story) and it’s a terrific product. When I made the move to Mac OS X, however, FaceSpan for X wasn’t ready and I needed something so I transitioned to AppleScript Studio. As I became accustomed to Project Builder (and then Xcode) and Interface Builder, I realized that while I really like FaceSpan and wish it well, I can’t see spending any money for an IDE when Apple provides pretty great tools for free.
As my applications become more ambitious and need more power that AppleScript alone just can’t deliver, I find that the ease of combining AppleScript Studio code with Objective-C (or anything else, really) in Xcode is so seamless and (relatively) easy that there’s no going back for me. I want FaceSpan to succeed because competition will push Apple to keep Xcode up-to-date with new features but, unfortunately, DTI isn’t going to get my upgrade fee.
Jon
Thank you both so much for the replies. You’ve definetly convinced me to stick with Studio and keep on trying. It’s a massive IDE, but hopefully 'll start finding what I need soon enough. Thanks again for your help – I’m sure I’ll be back.
If FaceSpan really wanted to give AppleScript Studio a run for its money, they would allow any OSA language to serve as the scripting engine, (but especially Mark Alldritt’s JavaScript OSA 
). Just imagine, an interface kit for ANY language that can be called within the OSA framework. Of course, there aren’t very many OSA languages out there at the moment, but most scripting languages on the Macintosh have OSA compliance as a future goal, including Perl and Python.
If I could create FaceSpan applications with JavaScript as the scripting language, I swear, I would pay TWICE the amount of money DTI is currently asking for, but so long as they intend to offer a product that is only just slighter better in some ways than AS-Studio, it really doesn’t seem worth the price.
I don’t have FaceSpan 4 but in in FaceSpan FaceSpan 3.5.2, you can use any OSA language you want, just like in Script Editor, as long as there is an OSA extension for that language installed (just change the language in the language drop down menu from AppleScript to JavaScript). Using Mark’s JavaScript OSA extension, you can indeed create JavaScript-based OSA apps in FaceSpan, no extra money required.
Jon
WHAT…!!! 
So I just downloaded the 4.0 demo. There is no language menu or language preference setting anywhere that I can see. Nor is anything but AppleScript mentioned in their documentation or on their website. I’m going to send a note off to them asking about this.
Here’s a screenshot of using JavaScript as the OSA language in FaceSpan 3.5.2:
Jon
I just downloaded the demo of FaceSpan 4.2 and, like Xcode, it does not seem to allow you to change the language of the editor from AppleScript to another OSA-compliant language the way v3.x did (and the way Script Editor 2.x currently does). I’m not sure why neither of these apps follow the same design as Script Editor (and Script Debugger, for that matter). I’d be curious about DTI’s response.
Still, tooling around in FaceSpan 4.2 is fun and there are a few definite improvements over Xcode (not the least of which is a single app for both coding and interface building) and the way you can double click on elements to add references to them in your code is cool but it still feels kind of like a kid’s version of an IDE when compared to Xcode.
Jon
[sigh…] I’ve been having fun with Konfabulator. It mixes two of my favorite things: XML and JavaScript. So, what’s missing? A graphical interface for building the graphical interface.
So would I… oh, I was supposed to write them an email.
Didn’t Shirley Hopkins used to inhabit this forum?
I don’t think Apple cares about OSA-compliance anymore, outside of AppleScript. I just tried to save a JavaScript OSA file as text out of Script Editor 2:
Error:
‘You cannot save this document with the extension “.js” at the end of the name. The required extension is “.applescript”. You can choose to use both, so that your file name ends in “.js.applescript”.’
Yeah, that makes sense… 
Yes, I still “inhabit” this forum, although I have, admittedly, been concentrating on FaceSpan and OSX. It was interesting to see the number of respondents who mentioned working with JavaScript, as I posed this question to development “early on.” The reply was that it “is possible.” Getting “core functionality” for FaceSpan however, took precedence. When I get more information as to FaceSpan’s future “from the top” I will pass it on.
Trying to be objective, in comparing FaceSpan with AppleScript Studio, the following is my reply:
Free
It’s hard to compete with free. Smile is “free” (but they ask for $350 to register it); AppleScript Studio is “free” (but the cost of all of Apple’s proprietary software is wrapped in a higher price for their computer). There is nothing that is really FREE; someone somewhere pays for it. So when you are in the marketplace, you look for what fits your needs and hope that it fits your pocketbook. The needs of the professional programmer may certainly be different than the needs of a scripter when it comes to a rapid application development tool or IDE builder.
Low Level vs High level
There is often much debate about scripting being programming. In a sense, scripting is programming, but there are different levels of programming. AppleScript was written to be a high level language, targeted specifically for inter-application communication. It has evolved to be more than that; but at its core, it is still targeted to be a language for the “high level” user. AppleScript Studio is Project Builder (XCode) written to work with AppleScript. When you work in XCode, you are working at a lower level. To many, that is what is wanted: a low level development environment which can use AppleScript as one of its languages.
On the other hand, there are those who would prefer to work at a higher “user-friendly” level. That is where FaceSpan fits in: a higher level development environment for those who want the ease and built-in functionality of a higher level language AND development environment. It is designed for “get in, get it done” scripting.
Feature Set
Feature for feature, FaceSpan and AppleScript Studio share many of the same features including the ability to call Cocoa methods. Many of the objects are the same as is the majority of the syntax since they are both built from the same AppleScript Kit.
So What is Different?
The strength of FaceSpan is that the object-oriented structure of AppleScript is built into the scripts for its objects (the application’s script is the parent of the window’s script, the window’s script is the parent of the scripts for the objects in its window). Yes, it is possible to build a script object architecture in an AppleScript Studio project, but that is the whole argument: You have to build it.
FaceSpan 's editor is intuitive and provides correctly formed syntax for objects and object properties as selected from an outline view of the project’s hierarchy.
FaceSpan comes with a number of “little” features that make working with the product a breeze (extensive use of contextual menus, alignment and distribution helps, message window, to name a few).
FaceSpan’s improved dictionary viewer allows saving an application’s dictionary plus the ability to view dictionaries in raw event code when needed.
FaceSpan incorporates a growing library of routines that can aid in putting a project together.
In summary: What I have always loved about the Macintosh was “out of the box” functionality. To me, this is the difference between FaceSpan and XCode: FaceSpan is “plug-and-play.” Sure, I can do most of the same things with AppleScript Studio that I do with FaceSpan, but it takes me a lot longer and I have to work at it. For me, time is money. I like having the right tool for the job. I am willing to spend a few dollars for products, whether FaceSpan or any other tool I use, that allows me to get a job done faster or better–after all that’s why I jumped into AppleScript when it was first announced–and was willing to pay $300+ for something that is now “free.”
I promise to be a better MacScripter “inhabiter” in the future, and to be here to answer your questions when I can.
Shirley Hopkins
FaceSpan Support
I just realized that this is the AS-Studio forum and not the FaceSpan one. I often fail to notice, since I click on threads from MacScripter’s index page.
Yeah, we JavaScripters are everywhere.
I like the demo alot, especially its object-oriented design. It is definately a nicer environment to work in than Studio, and the close integration with Script Debugger is a major plus. Getting my employeers to buy right now might be problematic, but I’m definately looking into purchasing my own copy.
I wasn’t making an “accusation” about where you should be inhabiting, Shirley.
Thank you for responding.