The F-Script project released a new version of F-Script, which is an open source, interactive and scripting environment built from scratch for Cocoa, the native Mac OS X object model. F-Script allows interactive exploration, testing and use of Cocoa-based objects and frameworks. It can be used stand-alone or embedded into other applications. This new version comes with many new features, including greatly improved graphical tools for manipulating Cocoa objects.
F-Script: An Interactive & Scripting Layer for the OSX Object System
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Any compatibility with GNUstep?
This is the first thing that really makes me desire to own a Mac. A Smalltalk-like scripting language… <drools/>
Any compatibility with GNUstep?
I was thinking the same.
Well, GNUstep has something similar, called StepTalk (for quite a while now):
http://steptalk.agentfarms.net/
But I think it would be nice to be able to use F-Script for both Cocoa and GNUstep, so that developers can use a single scripting language
F-Script is way cool. It is a great way to learn the Cocoa API through exploration- one of the best ways to learn, IMHO, and the best for me.
The one drawback for for for F-Script is that you cannot use it for creating applications. That is, you cannot create new classes or methods- only call existing methods and instantiate existing classes written in Objective C.
This is part of the design, but still something I lament. I am a Smalltalk programmer, and F-Script is pretty much Smalltalk with a couple list operations added, operations that I have added to Squeak easily as an exercise.
That said, F-Script has come in handy a number of times for me. For example, when I was still using a Newton MP2100 as my PDA, I need something that would convert PDFs to HTML+JPG so I could read PDF docs on my Newt, where there was no real PDF reader. I wrote such a converter in only a dozen lines of F-Script, which handled the conversion using the super powerful Cocoa API and a folder action setup so that when a PDF was dropped in the folder the conversion would go automatically, which I would then get on the Newton via FTP or email.
The object browser provided by F-Script is simply awesome. I have never seen something like that before. Are there equivalents for other environments ?
The browser comes from the Smalltalk roots of Objective C and F-Script. In Smalltalk everything is an instance of a class, and everything is done by sending messages to an object. So instead of having an editor with some source code, you have a browser who navigates the hierarchy of objects, and allows you to modify it on the fly. Also, a Smalltalk browser is even more powerful than F-Script’s.
So, apart from Smalltalk environments such as VisualWorks, Squeak Smalltalk etc. there aren’t many environments who give you such power and freedom. The old Visual Age for Java (since it was written in Smalltalk) had something similar. Likewise, Eclipse has a Java Browsing perspective which has the same approach.
F-Script is pretty much Smalltalk with a couple list operations added, operations that I have added to Squeak easily as an exercise.
I’m curious… which are this list operations?