Am I right in saying that the code editor is unusable on mac, due to the requirement that Visual Studio be installed?

Obviously I can write and edit code files, but presumably I cannot compile the code under Mac OS or compile the code for Mac OS within that environment?

code editor still should generate the cpp/h files on mac (check your project folder "_C++ Build_", files should be generated there, you could copy those files to your xcode project, but I know it's not reasonable to do this every time)

At the moment I haven't really checked if automatic compilation is supported when using xcode

visual studio has this nice features that it can be launched via command line to compile custom project

I don't know if xcode has this

hrrrrm, I think XCode can be operated from the command line. Though I've never used it.

So am I right in saying that the code editor 'compiles' EsenthelScript to C++?

I'm just trying to understand the benefits of using the code editor over simply writing in C++

Yes, it converts the codes to C++
You can verify the benefits in the documentation - http://www.esenthel.com/wiki/index.php?t...ode_Editor