I haven’t written any programs since Apple ll basic stuff (used to be sooo easy) and am wondering if it is possible to write some database stand alone programs with Applescript Studio, using Aplescript without C. It would need the ability to have daily inputs from the user and would need to add these inputs to the database, save them, then manipulate the data and output both charts and data. I know this can be done easily in any database program, but I would also like to possibly market the application as a stand alone. I have searched the site, but have not found any answers.
thank you for your help.
You can hold data in a variety of files (specially plain text files), and write/read when needed. So, if you need a simple database with basic features, it can be done in vanilla AppleScript.
For more complex tasks, I would take a look to ScriptDB: http://osaxen.com/files/scriptdb1.0.1.html
Anyway, the bad part is charts. You can’t do it in AS nor ASS. You’d need a third-party scriptable app. You can use Smile, which is free and includes lots of examples of graphics and PDF scripting, but every user of your app would need download and install Smile. http://www.satimage.fr/software/en/index.html
Hmmm… Perhaps you could also make some “basic” and beautiful graphics using a Webview in Studio and a bit of HTML/CSS/JavaScript. Or including a Flash movie which would make the graphics for you, reading data from external files… This way you could preserve the “standalone” requirement…
Here is a sample vanilla-AppleScript database engine: http://scriptbuilders.net/files/jtablelib1.0.html
Thanks for the info, guys…
I recognise that this thread is a little old, and that my question is only vaguely related, but here goes…
I have a few programs written in XCode / Applescript Studio, that I would like to share with other Mac users.
How do I create a standalone application that has no dependency upon the XCode folder (containing ‘build’ folder, ‘main.m’ ,‘.lproj’ folder, etc.), and does not require XCode to be installed upon the system?
Also, how do I bundle in a folder containing multiple images that needs to be accessed by the application?
My apologies if this is a really basic issue, but despite long searches I have not been able to find the answer.
Any help gratefully received.
When you “build” the project (Apple + B), a standalone application will be created in the “build” folder. No dependencies, except for the ones you determine in your code.
All the stuff “.m”, “.h”, “.framework”, etc. is used only to create the binary executable. The “.nib”, you script, images, icons, etc., is all bundled in the “Resources” folder of your standalone app.
You can access those “resources” from AppleScript using the “path for” command. Something as (pseudo-code):
set theImage to (path for resource "my pic" extension "jpg")
Thanks for the help. I was using the application in the Build folder, but whenever I transferred the resulting application bundle to another system, it would fail to run.
After a little more searching (http://bbs.applescript.net/viewtopic.php?id=16756) I discovered that the cause was due to me building in Debug mode instead of Release mode (how did I manage to miss this for so long?!).
The application now runs fine on different machines.
Acknowledgements to Mikey-San and jj for invaluable help.
P.S. As for bundling images, I simply dragged the folder of 30 x 3MB Tiffs into the application package, and determined the ‘path to me’. Maybe I will try the ‘path for resource’ command instead. Is there much benefit to the latter method?
No, it’s just a little simpler to use.