Once the DAZ Script IDE has been installed, it is accessible via View > Tabs > DAZ Script IDE. This will enable the DAZ Script IDE tab, as seen to the right. The tab can be left floating or docked with other tabs, as desired. A brief overview of each tab section follows, with detailed usage covered in the next section.
A menu for the IDE is located at the top of the tab. This menu provides access to the file and edit actions available within the IDE. Most are basic functions, such as opening, closing, and saving scripts or copy, paste and find/replace.
The Script tabs allow the user to create or modify scripts for use in DAZ Studio. Multiple scripts can be open at once.
The Debug window at the bottom displays debug messages when there is an issue with a script that has been ran from within the IDE. These messages can be helpful for narrowing down the cause of a failure in the script.
As detailed in the DAZ Script documentation the scripting syntax is similar to several other scripting languages. To assist with proper formatting of the script code, the IDE provides the following two features:
When a DAZ Script class object is being referenced within the code, the IDE will pop up a menu containing the member functions and variables for that class, as shown to the right. This makes the process of selecting the desired member much simpler and can often help reduce the amount of time spent referencing the DAZ Script documentation. The options displayed in the dropdown will also be further refined as the user continues to type the name of the desired member. For example typing “Scene.is” will display only those members of the Scene object that begin with ‘is’.
Another very helpful feature of the DAZ Script IDE is the syntax highlighting functionality. The contents of the script text will be colorized based on the type of content the editor determines them to be. As shown in the example to the right, the IDE has turned the comment at the top to green, while the DAZ Script keywords var and new have been changed to blue, with the contents of the MyDialog string being shown in grey. There are several other categories of text that will be highlighted: Label, Number, Preprocessor, Standard, and Type. The colors used can be customized within the Preferences dialog which will be explained later in this document.
The DAZ Script IDE allows many aspects of the way it displays scripts to be customized. These preferences are set via the Edit > Preferences menu. As shown to the right, a Preferences dialog will appear with the various options listed. The options are many of those expected in an IDE: customization of syntax highlighting, control of word wrap, auto complete, parentheses matching, and tab and indent behavior.
The Syntax Highlighting section allows the customization of each content type defined by the IDE. For each of these types it is possible to change the font, size, color, and style of all words matching that content definition. The Options section allows for word wrap, auto complete, and parentheses matching to be enabled or disabled. The Indentation section allows the user to set the default tab size, indent size, specify whether tabs are kept when a script is loaded, and enable or disable auto indent.