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Re: Fonts in .gorm files
From: |
Marcus Müller |
Subject: |
Re: Fonts in .gorm files |
Date: |
Thu, 12 Jun 2003 15:51:34 +0200 |
On Thursday, Jun 12, 2003, at 13:55 Europe/Berlin, David Ayers wrote:
Well my personal experience of having to maintain an app that has ..
(let me count) 336 nibs (and that's just one of the two active
versions, I'm maintaining) is that nibs (NSCoding based archives) are
harder to maintain. This is an EOF app where the UI layout consists
of texfield, combo boxes and table views grouped and aligned. And
believe me, if other pre conditions where different, porting
Renaissance to OS 4.2 and converting 95% of those nibs to gsmarkups
would be high on my priorities, because pixel counting for a
consistent UI expierence is just far to time consuming.
I agree that EOF applications are pretty hard to maintain, mostly
because all required associations are usually hidden from view and need
to be checked by selecting all views. But, usually that's an issue (but
a big and annoying one) only when porting UIs between platforms (i.e.
OPENSTEP, Rhapsody and Mac OS X). I did this once for Lamento
(http://www.mulle-kybernetik.com/software/Lamento) and know how
troublesome a task that is.
From what you are telling I conclude that the interfaces are probably
very similar among each others. I agree that building interfaces with
Gorm is a waste of time considering this repetitive task and
Renaissance might be a better choice, as the interfaces could be
constructed on the fly. However, that's a pretty special case.
Gorm could be used as a WYSIWYG editor I think. How one would
graphically handle the layout constraints imposed by the box layout
system in Gorm is another question, though. It could be done similar
to the way the 'guiders' work, but probably indicating 'destination
boxes' instead.
This seems like a proposal of an(other) autolayout system independent
of Gorm and Renaissance. Yet both (or one, or another tool) would
have to support it.
Ah, I didn't make this clear enough. What I meant is that Gorm could
well be able to read/write Renaissance files and suit as an editor for
the autolayout system. You'd need a new palette sporting the special
layout elements and have a fancy way of visualizing 'layout in advance'
if you drag an element from a palette and drag it to its intended
destination. Most likely, you'd also need another window visualizing
the views' hierarchy etc.
It's all about choosing the right tool for the task at hand.
I agree. Most of the time people seem to underestimate the complexities
of autolayout systems, thouh. Because it really annoys me from time to
time I *had* to raise the issue! ;-)
Cheers,
Marcus
--
Marcus Mueller . . . crack-admin/coder ;-)
Mulle kybernetiK . http://www.mulle-kybernetik.com
Current projects: finger znek@mulle-kybernetik.com
Re: Fonts in .gorm files, Tobias, 2003/06/11