How to make a SublimeText 2 shortcut to Run Processing sketches on Mac?

Question

I'm using SublimeText 2 to code my Processing sketches, but every time I need to run the program I have to switch to Processing and click the Run button, Textmate have a bundle to automate this process and I would like to do the same with SublimeText but I've no idea how

I'm using Mac OSX Lion by the way

Answer 1

Thanks for the advice brunchstorm! I modified your method so that the Processing file open in Sublime can be sent directly to the Processing application. First, I downloaded and installed a TextMate Processing package so that .pde files would be correctly identified (and syntax-highlighted) as Processing documents in Sublime ( http://www.onebitwonder.com/projects/processing ). If you browse that tmbundle, there is a TextMate language definition file (Processing.tmbundle/Syntaxes/Processing.tmLanguage) that must be modifed. Near the bottom of that file there is a line:

<string>source.java-processing</string>

This line must be changed to:

<string>source.pde</string>

After you save Processing.tmLanguage, you can drop the entire Processing.tmbundle package into your Sublime packages directory. Now open a .pde document in Sublime. In the bottom-right corner of the Sublime window is a document type identifier that will probably say "Plain Text". Click on that identifier and pick "Open all with current extension as..." and choose "Processing", which should now be in the list. I wrote two AppleScripts to launch and run Processing and a shell script to drive them (this is the only way I could get the AppleScripts to launch correctly from Sublime in sequence).

The first script launches Processing if it is not already running. This step is necessary because if Processing is not running, a delay must be inserted before Processing will register keystrokes (a splash screen appears for several seconds during startup). A delay of 3 seconds works well with my system, but you may need to lengthen the delay depending on your hardware. Perhaps somebody else can think of a more elegant way to make AppleScript wait for processing to get past the splash screen.

First AppleScript (named "first_processing.scpt" by me):

--check to see if Processing is running
tell application "System Events"
    set x to (count (every process whose creator type is "Pde1"))
end tell

--if Processing is not running, open Processing and delay
--for three seconds to allow time for splash screen
--to disappear and to allow keystrokes to be
--registered
if x is 0 then
    activate application "Processing"
    delay 3
end if

The second applescript sends a keystroke to run your Processing program (named "second_processing.scpt"):

tell application "Processing"
    activate
end tell

tell application "System Events"
    --deliver the "run" command
    delay 0.1
    keystroke "r" using command down
    --hide Processing; delay is necessary for reliable hiding
    --you may want to turn off hiding to see error messages
    delay 0.2
    keystroke "h" using command down
end tell

The driver shell script (named "launch_processing_file.sh"):

osascript ~/Documents/AppleScript_Library/processing/first_processing.scpt
open -a Processing $1
osascript ~/Documents/AppleScript_Library/processing/second_processing.scpt

Finally, the Sublime build system for Processing (to be stored in your user directory with a ".sublime-build" extension):

{
    "cmd": ["sh", "full_path_to_shell_script/launch_processing_file.sh", "$file"],
    "selector": "source.pde"
}

Note that you must choose "Use external editor" in the Processing preferences for this method to work correctly. Also note that your Processing file must be contained in a folder with the same name. I may write a script to create the proper enclosing folder for a bare Processing file, but for now that aspect is not taken care of automatically. Enjoy!

P.S.

This is my first post here. What a fantastic site!