Facespan

[tperry2x]

Not Facepalm (as I keep reading it), but Facespan.
Very similar in design to Runtime Revolution / Livecode... strikingly so.
http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/facespan-3

Instead of the main IDE being focused on OpenXTalk, it's purely implemented in Applescript.

[richmond62]

Cripes . . .

Was that for MacOS 7,8 & 9?

Time to fire up my PPC Mac Mini running Siberian Tiger
[tarted up 10.4] and 9.2 again and give that a go.

Mind you, a bit like Hippotheriums: not much cop nowadays beyond a big think about what survives and what dies out.

[richmond62]

There is a PPC Mac OS X version available as well:

http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/facespan-43

[richmond62]

AND:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160314024 ... Alive5.mov

https://web.archive.org/web/20160314024 ... kspace.mov

https://web.archive.org/web/20160314024 ... idgets.mov

https://web.archive.org/web/20160314024 ... 03Code.mov

[richmond62]

But, in Facespan 4.3 its interface was deviating from the RunRev one [as if it ever was lined up with it]:
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Picture 1.jpg (258.03 KiB) Viewed 10609 times

[tperry2x]

Journeying back into 'Classic' Mac OS for a minute, I noticed that in LiveCode 1.1, they tried the 'unified' inspector palette thing. The problem with this of course was that the palette took up 2/3rds of the screen when writing any code, and when inspecting a button, it normally continued to take up 2/3rds of the screen - when it didn't lose focus or crash that is.

The standalones generated were around 2MB in size, for what essentially can be a window with interface elements. The same stack generated on Mac OS 10.9 and above takes 19+MB. So I wondered why the bloat? Can this fat be trimmed?

[richmond62]

I noticed that in LiveCode 1.1, they tried the 'unified' inspector palette thing.

That's odd, I missed that one: and it is even odder when I consider that I started with RunRev 1.0.

Could you "be a darling" and post some screenshots of this?

[tperry2x]

Could you "be a darling" and post some screenshots of this?

Thinking about that, the odd graphical glitch could be because I'm running Mac OS 9 through sheepshaver.
But here's what I meant about the universal palette not changing size.
https://www.tsites.co.uk/otherstuff/ran ... code_1.mp4
It could just be a quirk of sheepshaver.

[richmond62]

What you call a 'unified' inspector is ONLY the properties palette.

What is a bit more instructive is how KM and his sister (Yes) have managed to edge out all the other people
in that about thing.
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[OpenXTalkPaul]

Very similar in design to Runtime Revolution / Livecode... strikingly so.
http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/facespan-3

Instead of the main IDE being focused on OpenXTalk, it's purely implemented in Applescript.

Somehow I missed this thread when it was first posted. I remember Facepan, it was basically an AppleScript UI-toolkit to enable using AS to build 'real' apps, long before they bridged AS to Objective C giving us AppleScriptObjC (which along with AppleScript Studio/X-code-NeXTstep-Interface Builder this can be semi-xCard-ish).

To be honest I didn't find Facean all that useful back in classic macOS days because If I wanted to make a UI for some AppleScripts beyond making drag+'droplets', I could always use HyperCard for that. I didn't keep up on news of Facepan into the Mac OS X Cocoa days (and I could still use HyperCard in 'classic mode' up to 10.4 anyway). Like OXT and others that followed, HyperCard had the syntax: do pMyScript as AppleScript (which could actually be the name of any OSA scripting-lang that was installed on the OS). I guess it could be said that HyperTalk + AppleScript was an early example of polyglot coding.

Facepan lastest releases were betas for v5 some time around 2009-2012 ish.
http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/facespan-50-beta

[richmond62]

Typing 'Facespan' into Wikipedia results in a redirect:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Script_Debugger

[richmond62]

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AND, our friends are pushing the 'new' GUI/IDE/thang for LC 10 as "the latest thing".

Of course, it could be that is a case of 'a coming man already gone' give the above.

[richmond62]

Ooh; "responder" . . . as in "co-respondent" in divorce cases of the 1930s (bang up to date there):
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Wonder 'QHAT' (to use a guid Scots vocable) the equivalent of that will be in the 'Bob Dylan' § LC 10 . . . ?

§ https://youtu.be/ftmNaxTNex4

[richmond62]

Unlike the current GUI/IDE (err: wozza difference?) we "know and lurve", Facespan chops things up a bit:
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SShot 2024-06-06 at 13.36.18.png (73.78 KiB) Viewed 983 times

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While this takes up a lot more screen space, it probably makes it slightly easier for beginners . . .

The whole 'thing' begs the Q about how the 'flying fekk' one would go about developing a full-screen app: as, by-ther-way, does the LC 10 thang.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

Unlike the current GUI/IDE (err: wozza difference?) we "know and lurve", Facespan chops things up a bit:
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SShot 2024-06-06 at 13.36.18.png
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While this takes up a lot more screen space, it probably makes it slightly easier for beginners . . .

The whole 'thing' begs the Q about how the 'flying fekk' one would go about developing a full-screen app: as, by-ther-way, does the LC 10 thang.

Do you mean how would AppleScript work as a fullscreen app? If so, one could do that with AppleScriptObjC which gives AS native access to Cocoa objects (such as NSWindows). I know for a fact it's possible, and you don't even need Xcode/Interface Builder to do it. I did sort-of liked AppleScriptObjC when it appeared, but the biggest problems with it are:
1) not a lot of publicly available example code for using ObjC APIs, AppleScriptObjC was never widely adopted by users and now days AppleScript has basically just become 'what's under the hood' for the Automator 'low code' (code-blocks) stuff.
2) AS & AppleScriptObjC are inherently macOS only, no cross-platform apps will ever come out of that.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

And yes I'm familiar with ScriptDebugger, it's pretty good (better than using Apple's Script Editor), but I don't write a lot of AppleScript scripts anymore (I did do a TON of that decades ago for printing automation stuff). ScriptDebugger is still going (for almost 3 decades), but Late night Software doesn't make Facepan anymore.
https://latenightsw.com

Similar to Facepan there's Smile and SmileLab (http://www.satimage.fr/software/en/index.html) but SmileLab hasn't gotten an update since 2016.