Finally we have finished the CodeChecker for Mac! It is a spell checker for Word on Macs, using our minoritarian languages web service.It was a long journey along the path of AppleScript's philosophy and it was quite instructive for us to learn development in the Mac World.
We realized that Applescript has big
potentials as an automation language, but translating complex macros with various data structures in Applescript wasn't a simple task.
X-code is a powerful development tool, however it doesn't offer useful features like code-completion on Applescript, because Applescript’ structure makes it hard to create an efficient code completion tool; we managed without.
Throughout development path we realized that Applescript offers developers flexible solutions, like using calls to other scripting languages like Python or Perl, and this feature was fundamental for some CodeChecker features.
Another powerful tool that we used in developing CodeChecker was InterfaceBuilder, to 'build' a nice Cocoa user friendly interface, and it worked well. CodeChecker has a nice Mac style interface, with a sliding panel for configuration. InterfaceBuilder is very useful and quite simple to use, moreover integration between X-Code and InterfaceBuilder is quite natural.
Finally we had to pack the application:
the last step was to make a installer simple to use
and do a complete installation of our product
with the possibility of multiple choices for various type of installations;for this work we used Package Maker, another Mac tool for developing Mac installers, and I must admit that it did what it had to very well!
The final evaluation of this Mac development work is quite positive, if we exclude some initial bad experiences due to limited knowledge of the
local hacks; now we can go much faster.
Roberto Baldi
Matteo Bicocchi
