Learning Script Debugger on the Fly

David Glass first learned about AppleScript during a job interview at a pre-press house in 1998. His potential employer handed him the AppleScript manual and asked him to write a script, "albeit a simple one", he recalls. He credits the clarity with which the manual was written for his success in carrying out the task. He was subsequently hired, primarily for his knowledge of Microsoft Access. The company wanted its Excel-based production tracking system converted to Access. A secondary role was support of the Mac-based prepress departments.

“My first assignment with AppleScript was to redesign an order grouping and output application,” he explains. “That led to a reworking of the typesetting system and finally, the nearly complete automation of the order creation process.”

His boss, having heard about the advantages of Script Debugger, purchased a copy of version 2.0 but didn’t actually implement it. As with AppleScript, David learned how to use Script Debugger on the job, something he says was “extremely easy to do. Script Debugger functions as a vanilla editor without issue, but has all the features a professional developer would need,” he says. “The fact that those features aren’t in your face allows new users to find them as their experience and needs grow.”

Script Debugger’s ability to step through scripts was the first feature that really jumped out at David. “Later, as my knowledge of AppleScript increased, Script Debugger’s library functionality came in handy”, he says. “And, of course, the debugging tools, like being able to test a droplet within the editor, saved me so much time.”

His first encounter with Script Debugger’s editor was particularly memorable. “Initially, I didn’t use AppleScript’s built-in editor, except when I had to edit a script on a production machine. The situation was particularly troublesome when the script was bigger than AppleScript’s Script Editor could handle,” he explains. "Fortunately, Script Debugger doesn't have a 32K limit on writing scripts and after using it, I realized just what an exercise in frustration using AppleScript’s Script Editor could be."

Prior to automating with AppleScript and Script Debugger, the pre-press house hired a contractor to write a Quark XTension, which used a FoxPro database to build the Quark documents. While that process worked, it didn’t allow the flexibility they required to maintain maximum productivity and eliminate down time.

Print jobs were divided into two categories – ‘commercial’ (company letterhead, multipart forms, business cards, etc.) and ‘social’ (wedding invitations, announcements, personalized napkins, etc.). Because both of these categories required their own Quark XTension, it was not possible to run both types of print jobs at the same time. Work on a ‘commercial’ job had to be shut down in order to run one classified ‘social’. The answer was a template-based solution. To accomplish this, David removed all the data from the database and then used Script Debugger to automate Quark to build the documents using the data files (which were just delimited text at that point) to build text and picture boxes, and tag the documents with various text information.

As a result of automating, the typesetting department was cut nearly in half, and print job capacity almost tripled. In fact, David used that project as his Master’s thesis. He has a degree in Computer Information Systems with a specialization in databases and is also an Apple Certified Help Desk Specialist.

After four years at the print house, he pretty much went as far as he could and soon found a more challenging position with another company. Unfortunately, it folded before he even started. He quickly made the decision to strike out on his own, knowing that like his former employer, there had to be several companies out there that could benefit from his expertise and experience. That was in May of 2002. His company, Gray Matter Consulting, offers application development services, scripting, and general technical consulting. “Business”, he happily reports,” is growing”.

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