[MacRuby-devel] MacRuby-devel Digest, Vol 46, Issue 24

[Jean-Denis MUYS]

On 21 déc. 2011, at 00:43, David Frantz
 wrote:

Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 18:43:40 -0500
From: David Frantz <websterindustro at mac.com<mailto:websterindustro at mac.com>>
To: "MacRuby development discussions."
<macruby-devel at lists.macosforge.org<mailto:macruby-devel at lists.macosforge.org>>
Subject: Re: [MacRuby-devel] A Future for MacRuby
Message-ID: <E5E9A3A9-39E7-474E-B6F9-0A93B07A4CDF at mac.com<mailto:E5E9A3A9-39E7-474E-B6F9-0A93B07A4CDF at mac.com>>
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The XCode integration is actually something that I find bothersome, especially the reliance upon nibs or whatever they are called.

Neither Xcode, nor Cocoa rely on NIB files. At all. Everything you can do with a nib file, you can do without. A nib file is nothing but a collection of objects that have been serialized to a disk file, and that can be resurrected at run time. period. Your perception is wrong, and I am afraid you may pass judgement based on that misunderstanding.

 As an IDE goes XCode has never really been professional level, though I know that statement frustrates many it is very much true.

I have precisely the opposite opinion, Xcode's bug non withstanding.


As to nibs well the whole thing is just very obtuse and frustrating to me.

Clearly, you misunderstand them. NIB files, as collections of pre-built and serialized objects are very useful. I use them all the time.

   Mind you my background is not the same as many here, being focused on industrial automation, but if find the use of nibs and Interface builder to be very taxing and not very object Oriented.

NIB file is the most object-oriented approach to User-Interface construction that can be. What can be more object-oriented than serializing objects? It runs circle around code generation for example (or worse, code attachment, Visual Basic style).

 MacRuby would likely generate a lot more interest if they moved away from the interface builder approach to GUI development.

MacRuby is neither here nor there. As a language. it's completely neutral regarding how you design your app's user interface. MacRuby neither helps with, nor impede, either of:

- using NIB files
- using plain Cocoa code
- using layers over Cocoa code, whatever they may be (HotCocoa being a MacRuby-specific instance)

I for one will keep using NIB files for GUI construction, and for as many other use as possible. It's the most flexible approach to date, the easiest to localize and to evolve. In contrast, when I learned HotCocoa, I found that it brought very little benefit, at a significant learning cost.

  I know this will result in many arrows coming my way, but really folks lets be objective here IB is a very strange departure from most GUI development systems.

IB? Are you sure? What is so special about IB? IB is an application that let's you draw view layouts (and a bit more). Sure it has limitations that I'd like to see removed, especially in Xcode 4 (I wish I could zoom in and out for example).

But I suspect you were still referring to NIB files, not to IB. So what are *most* GUI development systems that you are referring to? I have looked at many, and I found all those that I had to work with far inferior to this simple and sound idea of serializing objects.

Jean-Denis


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