SEEing LaTeX 18: Cutting SubEthaEdit out of the Picture

Let's take further steps along the path begun last time. Recall that we moved the portion of the AppleScript that dealt with the SubEthaEdit mode into the handler that produces the environment for the shell scripts. Let's introduce a few more handlers:

-- Manipulation of document properties

to checkSaveStatus given updating:shouldSave
    tell application "SubEthaEdit"
        if not (exists path of front document) then
            error "You have to save the document first"
        end if
        if shouldSave and (modified of front document) then
            try
                save front document
            end try
        end if
    end tell
end checkSaveStatus

on documentPath()
    tell application "SubEthaEdit" to get the path of the front document
end documentPath

on documentLine()
    tell application "SubEthaEdit" to get the startLineNumber of selection of front document
end documentLine

The checkSaveStatus handler is the most complex of the three, and the only one that warrants any discussion. It never returns a meaningful value, and thus is only to be called for its side effects. There are two possible side effects. First, if the front document in SEE has never been saved, an error is raised. Second, if requested and necessary, the handler will update the file on disk by saving the current document.

That may seem a bit obscure, so let's examine an example. The AppleScript for typesetting previously featured a rather complicated nesting of tell, try, and if blocks. Using the new handlers, the only thing outside the handlers in a rewritten typesetting script is:

checkSaveStatus with updating
set buildScript to join of {modeEnvironment(), quotedForm for "$SEE_MODE_RESOURCES/bin/buildlatex.sh", quotedForm for documentPath(), documentLine()} by space
do shell script buildScript

on seescriptsettings()
    return {displayName:"Typeset and View", shortDisplayName:"Typeset", keyboardShortcut:"@b", toolbarIcon:"ToolbarIconBuildAndRun", inDefaultToolbar:"yes", toolbarTooltip:"Typeset and view the current document", inContextMenu:"no"}
end seescriptsettings

Just three statements, plus the seescriptsettings handler to connect it to SEE.

The various handlers introduced thus far have been to support several actions in the LaTeX mode: typesetting, viewing the product PDF in an external viewer, cleaning up auxiliary files, and commenting out lines. All of these actions can be rewritten using just the handlers, without directly addressing SubEthaEdit at all.

The handlers thus provide a useful abstraction layer for working with several distinct types of actions. They definitely won't cover every case of interest, but should still be useful patterns for a lot of common actions in many different modes.