http://blog.formasfunction.com Form As Function is home to Greg Leppert, a curious thinker and tinkerer in Austin TX. Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:02:23 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 http://blog.formasfunction.com/2009/05/leave-me-be-im-processing-at-the-moment/ http://blog.formasfunction.com/2009/05/leave-me-be-im-processing-at-the-moment/#comments Tue, 26 May 2009 11:00:17 +0000 greg http://blog.formasfunction.com/?p=67 It’s been exciting to see web oriented technologies evolve, especially since Javascript started shaking off its rap as the hackery of the web and began the arduous transformation into one of its driving forces. Javascript hasn’t been the only focus, though. A while back Ben Fry and Casey Reas introduced the versatile Java based Processing language and environment and the art world, among others, has never been the same. That’s why when I heard about John Resig’s port of Processing to Javascript (Processing.js), utilizing the HTML canvas for rendering, I knew I needed to set aside some time to get my feet wet. This Memorial Day weekend was intended to be just that but when I sat down with my favorite code editor, TextMate, I found that there wasn’t yet a bundle that specifically addressed this new melding of Javascript and Processing. So, instead of digging into Processing.js itself, I dug into the TextMate bundle framework and now, with the extended weekend passed, I’d like to introduce my Processing.js bundle for TextMate. It’s a simple bundle, really, and at it’s core it ties together two existing bundles – the Javascript bundle that ships with TextMate and the Processing bundle, made for the Java incarnation, that can be downloaded from the official TextMate repository, and you’ll need both of them installed for the Processing.js bundle to work properly. It’s not perfect by any means (I’m certain there’s some conflicting language overlap between the Javascript and Processing bundles) but, with my love for TextMate and my excitement for Processing.js, I’m hoping it’ll get the ball rolling so that developing quick sketches can be as painless as possible. Given that goal, one of the main features is a hot-key triggered preview that allows you to write a pure Processing.js sketch with no wrapper HTML and preview it instantly in your open browsers. There’s a small amount of configuration that will make that preview much quicker so make sure to read the help section in the bundle menu after you’ve installed it. In the near future I’ll submit the bundle to Macromates for inclusion in their repository but for now you can download a zip of the current build here or check it out from my SVN repository here: http://svn.formasfunction.com/Processing_js.tmbundle. My hope is that others will chime in with revisions and help make TextMate a fun environment in which to write Processing.js sketches, so contact me if you’re interested in helping out.

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