05-26-2022, 06:42 AM
After some contemplation on where things are and where they are going...
Two changes coming to the Interface Builder design... one to the distribution and one to the user interface.
1) Single Window User Interface
With the upcoming addition of tree control support for iOS and Android in 3.3 it should be possible to release the Interface Builder for iOS and Android.
However the mobile interface paradigm is very different from the desktop and requires some changes. I plan on making it into a single window with a splitbar separating the user interface tree and the properties explorer.
This will also solve a problem that has developed on Linux. With the introduction of Wayland into general use (a mistake I feel) we can no longer count on the fact that we can place windows on the screen where we want since using Wayland with GTK3 and GTK4 windows will just appear wherever the window manager feels like putting them. The single window design will alleviate this problem as well.
I personally preferred the floating properties inspector on desktop platforms at least, but this change will be better overall, allowing easier mobile usage and preventing annoyances on Linux (and any other platforms that choose to pick Wayland over the superior but only slightly maintained X11).
2) Multi architecture distribution archives on Windows and MacOS (maybe others)
As someone made me very aware of, that developers who use the interface builder might not care about building their own packages from source. The installers should contain the header and libraries from any possibly supported architectures.
Minimally on Windows, the next version's installers will have x86-32 and x86-64 support and possibly ARM support (although currently I don't have any Windows ARM systems).
On MacOS the classic builds will include PowerPC and Intel libraries for both 32 and 64 bits. The modern builds will have Intel and ARM 64bit libraries.
OS/2 only supports Intel 32bit so this requires no changes.
Unix typically relies on the distribution to do the packaging or build from source, however I will look into options for this as well.
I don't think these changes will be of any concern to users, but if you are worried about anything please let me know!
Two changes coming to the Interface Builder design... one to the distribution and one to the user interface.
1) Single Window User Interface
With the upcoming addition of tree control support for iOS and Android in 3.3 it should be possible to release the Interface Builder for iOS and Android.
However the mobile interface paradigm is very different from the desktop and requires some changes. I plan on making it into a single window with a splitbar separating the user interface tree and the properties explorer.
This will also solve a problem that has developed on Linux. With the introduction of Wayland into general use (a mistake I feel) we can no longer count on the fact that we can place windows on the screen where we want since using Wayland with GTK3 and GTK4 windows will just appear wherever the window manager feels like putting them. The single window design will alleviate this problem as well.
I personally preferred the floating properties inspector on desktop platforms at least, but this change will be better overall, allowing easier mobile usage and preventing annoyances on Linux (and any other platforms that choose to pick Wayland over the superior but only slightly maintained X11).
2) Multi architecture distribution archives on Windows and MacOS (maybe others)
As someone made me very aware of, that developers who use the interface builder might not care about building their own packages from source. The installers should contain the header and libraries from any possibly supported architectures.
Minimally on Windows, the next version's installers will have x86-32 and x86-64 support and possibly ARM support (although currently I don't have any Windows ARM systems).
On MacOS the classic builds will include PowerPC and Intel libraries for both 32 and 64 bits. The modern builds will have Intel and ARM 64bit libraries.
OS/2 only supports Intel 32bit so this requires no changes.
Unix typically relies on the distribution to do the packaging or build from source, however I will look into options for this as well.
I don't think these changes will be of any concern to users, but if you are worried about anything please let me know!