Updated to version 1.01.
Now requires Yosemite or greater.
It's faster and many of the chevron-codes are now replaced with human-readable names. (There are a lot of codes, so I certain to have missed some.)
I've added a property at the top of the script that allows switching the output between TextEdit and the default text editor set in the Finder's Get-Info dialog. (If you haven't changed it on your system then the default is TextEdit.)
In my opinion BBEdit (or its freeware sibling TextWrangler) is a better vehicle for viewing this output than TextEdit. One reason for this is the ability to turn on “Show Tab Stops”, which makes the view of the hierarchy clearer (some other programming editors also have this feature).
You know, it's funny you posted this. I was wondering today if there's any sort of native way to display hierarchical data on the Mac. For example, here's the plist view from Xcode:
Another possibility would be to output XML. Most browsers support reading XML and collapsing nodes, etc. I could probably shake the dust off my XML skills if you needed help.
I'm not going to fiddle with transforming it to XML at the moment, but I have an osax that might make that easy – so I'll think about it.
I'm not aware of any freeware hierarchical viewers for the Mac other than Xcode. I have a great utility called PlistEdit Pro that's much lighter weight than Xcode (but also more expensive).
I’ll keep thinking on this. Seems to me there’s got to be a way to create a good view, in HTML. I’m not an HTML wiz by any means, but if I come up with something I’ll let you know.
You just focus on giving us good results. We’ll focus on everything else.
With Atom, you can collapse each node and level. I don’t think you can collapse all or expand all, but at least it helps hide the stuff you’re not interest in.
Don’t leave home without it. It is inconceivable to do more than a little work in AppleScript and not use this. Don’t the the price dissuade you: it will repay itself month after month, possibly week after week, or even day after day.
UI Browser too. It not only shows UI structure but writes pieces of AppleScript for you.
Really.
Unfortunately (so far), no JXA support. From the web site:
Script Debugger 5 does not support the new JavaScript for Automation feature introduced by Apple in Yosemite (Mac OS X 10.10).
Ironically, we once offered our own JavaScript implementation for Script Debugger versions 2 and 3 and discontinued it due to lack of interest. We are watching how much adoption Apple’s JavaScript for Automation receives. Offering debugging for Apple’s JavaScript implementation is non-trivial so this isn’t something we can easily add back into Script Debugger.
If sufficient interest in JavaScript for Automation develops we will seriously consider adding it to Script Debugger, or possible create a JavaScript specific version of the product.