Alpha and Frontier

Acknowledgment

Almost immediately after I had released Frontier menu 1.0 I got to know that Danis Georgiadis <dmg@hyper.gr> also had written some code to integrate Alpha and Frontier. He generously gave me his code to freely use together with mine. In version 2.0 I have taken the parts from his code which could easily be integrated with mine and which worked without problems.

Basic usage

The Frontier menu integrates Alpha and Frontier so that you can easily open Frontier's text windows in Alpha. Whenever you save the window in Alpha the Frontier database is automatically updated.

Frontier windows can either be opened using 'Edit with App' in Frontier's Main menu, or by using the Frontier database browser you can open them without leaving Alpha!

Database browser

With the database browser in Alpha you can browse the Frontier database without having to switch to Frontier. The selected object in the browser can be opened by hitting return. The text cells, which are colored green in the browser, are opened in Alpha, and other types of cells are opened in Frontier.

To navigate the windows you can use key shortcuts similar to those used to navigate Finder windows. For example, the tables can be expanded in the same window using the rightarrow or you can open a new browser window by typing cmd-downarrow.

In the 'Browse' submenu of the Frontier menu you can add browse points, so that you can quickly open a browser window at a certain location in the database.

Frontier shell

The Frontier shell in Alpha is an alternative to Frontier's Quick Script window. Type a command and hit return to have it executed in Frontier. The return value is then displayed on the next line. The shell has a command history which makes it easy to reevaluate the last command.

Scripts menu

Alpha has a Frontier Scripts menu to which you can attach Frontier scripts in a similar way as with other apps that support menu sharing. The menu to the right shows the default menu, which serves only as an example. Alpha does not support menu sharing so this menu works a little bit differently compared to Scripts menus in other apps, but the basic idea is the same. And the menu icon is a lot cuter :-)