Script Workspace First Impressions

[Mark Scott]

If you're looking for the "Script Workspace Secrets and Tips" thread, it's been moved over here.  ;-)

Meanwhile, share your first impressions of Script Workspace right here.

Mark

Edited May 13, 2015 by Mark Scott
To put tips where they belong, while providing a home for first impressions, good or bad.

[James Gill]

I just wish they had included code folding...I mean they give us all this cool stuff and then leave that out?  Meh

[knuellermueller]

I am with James. I can download any open source code editor which has endless more features since ages.

Sure we are very happy that we finally can work somehow like on editors that are free (open source) but there is so much more missing to make it palin good (not speaking about very good).

To be onest I was allmost ready to leave FM because it was nearly unprogrammable before.

My top 3 wishlist:

1. autocolor variables when you select one, so you can see where the rest hangs, same for code etc.

2. search function (hello? how could they forget this, its a joke to work on serious programming without beeing able to search for anything)

3. code folding

And this is really not a 1-2-3 thing its all equally necessary and makes it still  A P I T A to work with, It is just now that we can say ok, somehow we can now programm on this, but its not any close to so many free versions of code editors.

And now comes my strongest point: I dont see any other mention worth feature, so at the end (at least this gios for me) i pay 1000€ for a still poor code editor and I can not even leave that update out, because YOU NEED IT :/

For me this is very bad strategy and I try to switch as soon I can find an alternative.

 

So I go ahead and pay about 1000€ for all clients, server and editor and will say ok, the software is somehow ok, but not good but the company update policy is one of the worsed I can imagine, this is just way to expensive!

Btw. some of the function did exists in the MBS Plugin for 99€ which also has another 6000 functions (or so) that grow on a weekly basis, just because its pribaly all just not "that" complicated to do. I mean it is for this single person but hey Filemaker is a big company owned by Apple.

[Mark Scott]

BTW, after moving my original content over to a new thread/forum, where it can stay on topic, I forgot that — in this renamed "First Impressions" thread that still has my name as the nominal OP — I really ought to offer my own first impression.  

In that spirit, I gotta say that this new interface for scripting seems really nicely done and is already making me more productive.  Code folding, search-and-replace, and maybe a few more syntax coloring options (variable names, for example) would certainly be nice, so I'll probably head over to FileMaker's feature request page to place my vote for those, but as is, I'm already enjoying scripting vastly more.  Often, though by no means always, a software upgrade will have "that one feature" that makes you not want to go back, and for me Script Workspace is such a feature.

The unified, tabbed window, replacing multiple Manage/Edit Scripts windows, is a great clutter-reducer and works well in my "cheapass-virtual-multiple-monitor" setup (using Spaces on my MacBook Pro as if they were multiple monitors).  Would probably work equally well in a real multiple-monitor setup too, I presume.  The fact that Script Workspace remembers open tabs between sessions is a super nice touch: handy for keeping "Changelog" and other utility scripts always open in a consistent place.

Remember that if you have tips to share, head over to that other thread.  Sharing is caring.

Mark

[knuellermueller]

You are right, but it went up from 0 to lets say 50 points. Currently I am working on a 600 lines script.

Maybe I should splitt it up, but there is no way to organize this better, I tried alot. The point is that it contains allot of Variables, Loops and IFs, from the beginning to these end and they all somehow refere to each other, very complicated.

I just came back home to solve another bug and again it took allmost one hour to track down 3 variables trough all these lines.

I am sorry but its still impossible to work with!

Agreed its 300% better than before but I am very sorry I cant work with it.

Please check out Notepad++ that is just one of millions open soure text editors that has all the ideas in it which you need to get  the right view on what you are working on

Filemaker code editor before was just a nightmare now its ok, but how can 8i be happy since i still cant live with it?

I just cant understand why a huge company like Apple which is charging thousands of € for setup in a small company like mine cant keep up with ideas that lay arround on the street and that are free to copy just like so many great things in Notepad++

I mean what is Filemaker? A database? No surely not for this probaly everyone would chosse others. So what is it? Its a User Interface design Engine that combines a programming engine with a DB engine. All three pieces makes it great, but all three alone are nearly poor made. So what is the point? The point is like all other Apple things there is no real competitor, so they lay down on what they have and nearly dont change anything but charge alot. So we are like junkies that wait on their every year dosis  of a little Filemaker heroin.

 

I dont want to be a junkie! I want to tool that works! And i expect it like that because I just payed ALOT! of money on it.

 

 

[knuellermueller]

Long story made short:

I just mentioned those 3 points probably out of 50 I could imagine.

But there is this one single point that makes me so angry and that is:

 

There is still no search field

 

How stupid is that please???

So we where waiting about 18 month and now we pray another 18 month???

 

No way!!!

 

Edited May 13, 2015 by knuellermueller

[James Gill]

Is there any way to drop an open script into the script editor workspace?  One annoying thing that I've noticed about the Script Workspace is that if you open a script through the Script Debugger it opens in its own window.  There is no way to add the open script to the Workspace without searching for it and opening it directly from the Script Workspace.

 

One cool/annoying thing with the Workspace is the ability to specify different options for a function within a script via the keyboard.  If you go to a row and then use your arrow keys, you can cycle through the different options of a script function (parameters, set field, calculated result, etc) and then open the option by hitting the spacebar.  That's the cool part.  The annoying part is that the highlighting of the active selection is so faint that a lot of the time I'm stuck squinting to see what parameter I have selected. I wish you could control the highlight to make it more visibile.

Edited May 13, 2015 by James Gill

[Mark Scott]

Is there any way to drop an open script into the script editor workspace?  One annoying thing that I've noticed about the Script Workspace is that if you open a script through the Script Debugger it opens in its own window.  There is no way to add the open script to the Workspace without searching for it and opening it directly from the Script Workspace.​

Unfortunately not, James, to the best of my knowledge. You can tear a tab off of the workspace, but can't currently merge separate editing windows into the main SW window.  Would be nice.

The annoying part is that the highlighting of the active selection is so faint that a lot of the time I'm stuck squinting to see what parameter I have selected. I wish you could control the highlight to make it more visibile.

​Yes, it is light, to be sure.  I don't have any problem seeing which row is highlighted on my MBP.  On almost all of the previous computers I've owned, I color calibrated the monitor.  This is the first one I've just left on default settings, as the gamma and color temp both seem about right to my eyes.  Have you tried calibrating to see if that helps?  (Just a thought.)

[James Gill]

I haven't tried color calibration yet, perhaps I'll give it a shot.

Another annoyance: Auto-Complete with long relationship names.  For simple solutions I'm sure it works fine, but when you start dealing with larger files and complex functionality, the auto-complete is impossible to use.

 

 

[hbrendel]

On my Mac I can print a script to a pdf. In Preview (or Adobe Reader) I'm capable of searching. This also works for several or all scripts. I assume this is still possible.

[liltbrockie]

Was a Find/Replace function really such a goliath task to complete????

Honestly, as others have mentioned... Some FREE code editors have had it for probably over 15 years!

 

Unbelievable.

 

[LaRetta]

No, and it doesn't appear to replace Developer Assistant any time soon, either.  

[liltbrockie]

While we're on the subject of searching I see the relationship graph has had zero attention...So it's still fun and games looking for a T.O in there!

[Wim Decorte]

I haven't tried color calibration yet, perhaps I'll give it a shot.

Another annoyance: Auto-Complete with long relationship names.  For simple solutions I'm sure it works fine, but when you start dealing with larger files and complex functionality, the auto-complete is impossible to use.

 

 

​

Beg to differ here; its the naming convention, not the the size or complexity of the solution that is hurting here.   Reading any calculation with those long TO names must be painful too.

 

 

[James Gill]

​

Beg to differ here; its the naming convention, not the the size or complexity of the solution that is hurting here.   Reading any calculation with those long TO names must be painful too.

 

 

​Not particularly, because I can resize the data viewer to whatever size I need it to be.  Anchor-buoy notation can get extremely lengthy if you involve more than just a few related tables; throw in contextual field naming conventions and it's extremely easy to go over the 50 character limit (that's a rough estimate determined by me squinting and counting characters on the screen) in the new Script Workplace.

It's also the same reason I never use the Field Picker tool.  Sure you can search for a particular field or relationship name that you're looking for, but good luck deducing what you're picking when your picker looks like this:

 

 

 

And while I can see your point in the naming convention being the issue, sometimes it's just plain impossible to reduce the naming conventions to a more readable length and maintain context.

Edited May 14, 2015 by James Gill

[it.bugarski]

One really basic thing I miss in script editor -> "Undo" or "Cmd+Z" (Ctrl+Z)

Also, could be cool in next version to copy from plain text and paste it to the FM script editor.

Final impression about script editor is that with this improvement we've got enough to speed up on development. 

[Josh Ormond]

The script are still simply XML. I've considered making a code editor that you can just type and copy out and paste into another solution. Kind of like what Todd Geist is doing with the FMQB product. Very cool stuff. Same idea with the SeedCode's SQL Explorer. Generating the calculation from a set of options and entered text.

But then I figured everyone would just complain about it.

If you want find/replace, then your best option is to get Developer Assistant. The amount of time you save with those Open Source Code Editors with the few features you are talking about are overshadowed by all of the extra coding required to handle everything FileMaker does for you. Save yourself some aggrevation ( and us ), and get Developer Assistant. The time you save will more than pay for it's nominal cost.

And as has been said before...if you really think you can do it better, PLEASE PLEASE develop and release a product that is better than FileMaker. I would buy in. If you can do what FM does, without some of the bugs we work around, and add those features on everyones wish list...you WILL have me as a customer.

My opinion, even though it's not perfect, KUDOS FileMaker. Awesome work on this release. I should be able to save 30-40% on development time. My goal is to be much faster as a developer, and this definitely helps. FileMaker 14 makes me excited to be developing in FileMaker. And all of the other features and performance enhancements are fantastic too.

I know scripts get long sometimes. But batch code out into separate scripts, and modularizing the code is really important. This is one area I'm trying to get better at. It's my fault the scripts are so long. Not FMI. MasterDetail 2.0 from Todd Geist is really good example of modularized code. None of those scripts are that long. However, I've see similar files ( similar as in UI and Function ) where the scripts were 10x as long. Yet with some careful thought and organized code, it was done with way less steps. And the code is fast, and reliable. 

 

[Mark Scott]

I know scripts get long sometimes. But batch code out into separate scripts, and modularizing the code is really important. This is one area I'm trying to get better at. It's my fault the scripts are so long. Not FMI.

 

​I think the unified Script Workspace window helps tremendously with this.  In the past I always just felt like I was just juggling too many windows.  I suspect that that, maybe subconsciously, sometimes discouraged me from breaking up a long process into multiple subscripts.

One thing I'm playing around with lately (unrelated to FM14 and Script Workspace, but just comes along at the same time) is a TRY-CATCH-FINALLY approach to scripting, putting the main code ("TRY") into a single-pass loop, that exits directly the error-handling code ("CATCH").  I think that has the potential to force some sense of structure into scripts, long or short.

[kodama]

Missing code searching and undo are the biggest head slaps for me. My PHP-coding coworker thinks I am insane for being excited for line numbers! :-P

[Josh Ormond]

I think he is insane for being ok with coding every single line by hand/memory. FM Devs type 1000x less than many web devs.

[kodama]

I love FM, but I think it's ok to be honest that search and undo are fairly basic features in any code editor.

[DanShockley]

If you really want search-and-replace within scripts, you can use code that modifies the XML in the clipboard. I've built a useful (but potentially dangerous!) AppleScript tool for searching and replacing within FileMaker objects (not just script steps) in the clipboard, and have shared it on GitHub. https://github.com/DanShockley/FmClipTools

 

NOTE: This is Mac-only, since it uses AppleScript. Also, you can definitely cause problems for yourself if you aren't careful: the search-and-replace can easily replace something that wouldn't normally be user-facing (it runs on the ENTIRE block of XML in the clipboard, not just variable names, for example) and turn what is in your clipboard into something that isn't a valid FileMaker object. So, for example, don't copy a bunch of script steps, then replace "Step" with "MyStep" and then try to paste back into a FileMaker script. Make sure what you're searching for and replacing is something that is definitely unique (e.g. $MyOldVarName being replaced with $MyNewVarName). 

Any other AppleScript vets out there, please let me know if you'd to collaborate on improving and extending this. I've got a lot of other AppleScript that uses this technique to speed development, but not all of it is stable release. 

[Josh Ormond]

I love FM, but I think it's ok to be honest that search and undo are fairly basic features in any code editor.

​For sure kodama. I've already submitted it via Feature Request, and given the info directly to one of the Project Managers at FM.

[Josh Ormond]

Don't ever take anything I say personally. I'm a very laid back, good natured, fairly silly guy. My text is usually lacking the fun personality that usually have in my conversations. I laugh a ton, maybe too much.

I find the passion you all have for FM invigorating. And I almost never take anything too personal. Say what you want to me. I may fire back, but it's more providing info than arguing. I've no delusions that my opinion is all that important. I just talk a lot. lol

[kodama]

Oh no worries, I didn't read anything as negative. Have a great week! :-)

[LaRetta]

It took me a minute to figure out what the little guy represented (please see ScriptWorkspace1) next to some of my scripts but then I realized it was full-access privileges (ScriptWorkspace2), available directly without opening the script (both by right-clicking it or by script menu).

I agree, Mark, I love having multiple scripts open with a tabbed interface - so much easier!  No more wondering if all my multiple script windows were all closed and saved or where they were hidden behind everything else.  

Script WorkSpace may not have it all, but the improvement is huge and much appreciated!

[Bertie]

Now these are small points granted but why..

1) In the script workspace would you not show the close button on the tab all the time? Why hide it till you hover over?

2) Why when you add a new step eg Set variable would you not automatically open the setup for that step? You have to add the step and then have to click to open it? Why would you add the step if you weren't going to make it do something?

[eos]

You have to add the step and then have to click to open it?

​Why “click”? 

Why would you add the step if you weren't going to make it do something?

​Eventually you will make it do something, but not necessarily immediately. Sometimes you start with writing the skeleton of the script (maybe just a bunch of comments) and flesh it out later.

If the step options did open automatically, I'm sure some other folks would dislike that default.

"Allen Menschen recht getan, ist eine Kunst, die niemand kann.” (Old German proverb) 

[Cateleb]

I cannot get the disable / enable script step to work.  Help says you merely double click on the step to toggle the disable/enable  but all that doss is open to the usual specify dialogue.  the line number changes to a grey bullet thingy, as below, but it doesn't make any noticeable difference .. am I missing something obvious ?

 

[Cateleb]

sorry, meant to say that I know I can pres ctrl  / .. my query was related to why the double clicking thing the Help says to do doesn't work (for me)

[eos]

sorry, meant to say that I know I can pres ctrl  / .. my query was related to why the double clicking thing the Help says to do doesn't work (for me)

Where does the Help say that?

[innodat]

No, and it doesn't appear to replace Developer Assistant any time soon, either.  

Nor does it seem to replace beezwax's TextMate bundle for automatically formatting FileMaker calculations: https://www.beezwax.net/products/textmatebundle

And while we're at it, ClipManager, which is amazing for copy-pasting large quantities of mixed FileMaker objects at once while performing find/replace (for example the entire content of a layout, including fields, buttons, etc). I couldn't live without it:

http://www.myfmbutler.com/en/products/clip-manager-for-mac/6

Edited May 29, 2015 by artvault

[Josh Ormond]

Good stuff @artvault. I haven't seen the Beezwax bundle. Not sure how I missed that one.

[Mark Scott]

Where does the Help say that?

​I can't locate that either, nor do I remember ever reading it.  I think possibly Cateleb was misinterpreting step 2 in:

To disable script steps:

1.	Choose Scripts menu > Script Workspace.

2.	In the scripts pane, double-click the script that contains the script steps to disable.

3.	In the script editing pane, select the script steps, then choose Edit menu > Disable.

 

…which, of course, refers to opening the script itself in a workspace tab, not double-clicking on an individual step.  Well, that's my guess, anyway.

Mark

[Cateleb]

Hi Mark / Eos, yes Mark you're right, is was misreading the double click as the disable toggle ( ... the script step to disable) instead of the opening the script  

.. still prefer the old way 

Cateleb