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| It appears that v2.0 Professional Release Candidate will not allow script edits via E-RUN (as documented in the User's Guide). Only runs are allowed. I was able to do this in the past with v 1.2. Has this feature truly been taken away? Thanks, Jodene
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| Thank you for bringing the documentation portion to our attention. The E-Run interface in E-Prime 2.0 will offer the ability to run experiments from a dialog graphical user interface. Editing the contents of the script generated by E-Studio is no longer possible due to enhancements to the E-Prime system as well as protecting experiment replication and industrial partner intellectual property. Most scenarios where directly editing the E-Basic script will be able to be accomplished in E-Prime 2.0 Professional using Package files and the facilities via the StartupInfo manager, which permits loading properties into the Context from external files which can override a number of experiment settings such as display resolution, subject number, etc. Support for a Package file editor will be available in a forthcoming release. Support for external loading of variables into the context via external files through StartupInfo will be available in build 2.0.1.96 or later of E-Prime 2.0. -Brandon
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| Dear Brandon, Thank you for your reply. I'd like to voice my concern about the lack of direct access to the script files. I am sure that many other people will also find this to be a disturbing decision on the part of PST, Inc. Jodene
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And I will add my voice. Yes, I can see some merit to making it harder to edit the .ebs files. It always worries me when an experimenter opens the experiment in E-Run and the whole script sits there poised for editing, any slip of the keyboard could alter the experiment in unintended ways. But couldn't E-Run just open everything as read-only, and require a mode change to allow edits? Or better yet, make a true just-run-the-experiment version of E-Run, why should experimenters have to see all that ugly code every time they run the experiment anyway, my users have always complained about that.
Anyway, I have made extensive use of the ability to edit scripts in E-Run. There are times when all we get from a collaborator is the .ebs file, or the original .es has been lost, and the script has a bug, and the only way I can fix it is by editing the script in E-Run. Removing the ability to edit scripts in E-Run is really bad.
OK, but here's a workaround: I presume the .ebs files are still just text files. So, just load up the .ebs in any text editor (I like EditPad, it even knows context highlighting for VisualBasic; you might also like ConTEXT, or SlickEdit). Edit there, then load & run from E-Run. A little more inconvenient, but it might do the job. Heck, even with a fully working E-Run I have done things that way sometimes, just because the E-Run editor is so limited compared to a real programmer's text editor.
Still, I would very much rather that I could still edit script directly in E-Run. Please return that function!
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Oh my gosh, it's much, much worse than I thought. I just now got to try out E-Prime 2.0 Professional. First I saw that I almost completely misunderstood Jodene's complaint about the change in E-Run. I thought she meant that E-Run would allow us to view the complete script, and run it, but not edit the script. Now I see that E-Run does not even allow any display of the script!
Well, it's OK with me that you can now just double-click on a script file to run the experiment without having to view the code, that's exactly what I asked for earlier. But there should be an option to open the script file for editing.
The real surprise came when I opened the .ebs2 file in a text editor -- the .ebs2 files are not plain text files anymore! It uses some xml tags, so it's some sort of xml file (which could be OK), but then the script contents are bin.base64 encoded, so it is completely uneditable!!! (At least the .es2 files are still an editable form of xml, but that doesn't give you much advantage over using E-Studio).
This is bad, bad, bad. Some of our users might have to revert to version 1.2 just because of this failure. For those who need the SRBox under Vista, I have discovered that the SRBox driver from 2.0 works with 1.2 under Vista, so as far as I can tell we're all set to just continue using 1.2, except for those who really need the new features of 2.
Help, help, help!
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And another thing... As as text file, I was able to print off the .ebs files for hardcopy documentation as well as doing development away from the computer (perhaps I'm old-fashioned, but sometimes I still think better with paper and pencil). I notice that E-Studio still does not have any experiment printing features.
So I ask you -- just how, now, can we get hardcopy documentation of the E-Prime programs that we develop?
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Aha! I can still copy script text from the Full tab of the Script view in E-Studio, then paste that into a text editor to make a printout. Clumsy, but it will have to do. Still does not solve the script editing problem, that remains a major shortcoming.
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