Script Debugger lets you use an alternative text-editing application to edit a script — BBEdit, TextWrangler, or TextMate. Script Debugger’s implementation of this feature is seamless. With a script window open in Script Debugger, you open the same script in an external editor and edit it there. When you save and close the document in the external editor, you are back in the Script Debugger document, which has taken on the changes you made in the external editor.

To start an external editing session on the frontmost script window:

• Choose File > Edit With BBEdit. Actually, the name of the application shown in this menu item will depend on which of the three applications you have and which ones are running. Script Debugger will prefer a running application to one that is not running, and among running applications or non-running applications it will prefer the order BBEdit, TextWrangler, TextMate.

Thus, for example, if you have both BBEdit and TextMate, this menu item will be called Edit With BBEdit if both BBEdit and TextMate are running or if neither is running, but it will be called Edit With TextMate if TextMate is running and BBEdit isn’t.

When you start an external editing session, two things happen:

1. In the frontmost Script Debugger script window, a dialog appears warning that the script is being edited externally.

   

   Additionally, the script window is watermarked in its lower right corner with the word “Locked”.

   

2. A new window opens in the external editing application, containing the text of the Script Debugger script window (and the external editing application comes to the front).

At this point, the normal chain of events is that you would edit the document in the external editing application:

• Whenever you save the document in the external editing application, the Script Debugger copy is updated to match.

• When you close the document in the external editing application, the warning dialog is removed from the Script Debugger script window (and Script Debugger comes to the front). This is the normal way in which an external editing session ends in good order.

Alternatively, you might change your mind and decide to break off the external editing session prematurely without reflecting the changes from the external editing application back into the Script Debugger document. To do so:

• Switch back to Script Debugger and click Cancel in the warning dialog.