Alternatives to ExtendScript Toolkit

[frameexpert]

Hi, It seems that there was a thread on this some time ago, but I couldn't find it. I recently started using Visual Studio Code for CSS development and I really like it. Is there a way to use an alternative IDE for ExendScript? I would have to have a way to send the code from the IDE to my target document like InDesign or FrameMaker. Does any one know if there is a way to do this? It doesn't necessarily have to be with Visual Studio Code. Thank you very much. -Rick

[Loic.Aigon]

Hi,

Alternatives they are but the general consensus is that whatever IDE you use for writing your script, you'll end up debugging in the ESTK because unless I am wrong, there isn't any IDE that allow live debugging such as ESTK.

Once that said, I tend to log anything in a text file so if I have to check at something before an error is thrown, i log anything down. So eventually it's very verbose.

[Kasyan Servetsky]

As far as I know, you can write your code in

• AppleScript and debug it in Script Debugger only
• Visual Basic and debug it in VB6, VBA and (I guess but never tried to) in Visual Studio -- however things are totally broken here in the recent versions
• JavaScript and debug it in ESTK only (though other guys on this forum said they preferred alternative editors: e.g.  Sublime Text 2 and Textmate )

[Jongware]

A Sublime package to run in InDesign: Run In InDesign - Packages - Package Control

[riddifog]

You can now do it with VS Code using this extension

ExtendScript Debugger - Visual Studio Marketplace