Re: Proposition for a Gorm feature Was: Gorm too complex ?

[Gregory Casamento]

See below...
--- Pascal Bourguignon <pjb@informatimago.com> wrote:
> 
> > Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 18:45:46 -0800 (PST)
> > From: Gregory Casamento <greg_casamento@yahoo.com>
> > [...]
> > Such things can be done in the awakeFromNib method.
> > 
> > > In the  end, it's less work because  I don't have to  do anything just
> > > because some traducer added a  new localized strings file. As you have
> > > it currently  with Gorm  and Interface builder,  you need to  tune the
> > > interface even in that case. Too much work for me.
> > 
> > It seems like less work to me to do it in the above mentioned method and
> edit
> > the GUI using Gorm as I see fit, instead of maintaining pages of generated
> > code.
> 
> The main point of have source code, is portability, 

Portability shouldn't be an issue since the archiving format is platform
neutral.

> and with the added
> benefit of ease  of versionning with CVS, and  the possibility to edit
> it even  if Gorm is  not available. 

This end could be achieved by storing the files in XML format or plist format
(i.e. some human readable format) instead of the binary .gorm format.

> If InterfaceBuilder  had generated
> Objective-C  source code,  a  lot of  OPENSTEP  applications could  be
> ported to GNUstep much more easily!

Possibly true, but they were not done this way and we are striving to be
compatible.  Since generating the code without creating a .gorm file does not
allow for easily loading the GUI back in and editing it. 

The best way to achieve what you are talking about is to create a separate
utility which takes the .gorm file and creates the .m and .h files you want. 
This would preserve the best of both worlds.  It would allow Gorm to be
developed as a clone of IB w/o code generation and it would allow anyone who
wants to hardcode the GUI to generate the code from the .gorm file.

> > > > Pascal Bourguignon <pjb@informatimago.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Now suggestion:
> > > > 
> > > > Instead of writting archives of  user interface objects, why not write
> > > > Objective-C source code,  that would build this user  interface net of
> > > > objects instead of unarchiving them.
> 

I believe that code generation should be discouraged since it is less elegant
than simply unarchiving a pre-built GUI.  In my experience w/ OPENSTEP,
programs which hardcode the GUI are more difficult to maintain since the
interface through which you are making GUI changes is not intuitive (the source
code).  Also, since the GUI is in code the program must be re-compiled and
re-linked every time even the smallest change is made.

IMHO, the effort necessary to do this is almost as great as the effort
necessary to finish Gorm.

Later, GJC


=====
Gregory John Casamento
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