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Nib XML format question

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Nib XML format question

Subject: Nib XML format question
From: Julien Silland <email@hidden>
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2006 22:08:35 +0100

Hi everyone,

Since I'm-not-sure-when, Apple offers the developers the possibility of saving their nib files to a XML based text format (IB -> save as…, then open keyedobjects.nib in the nib's bundle). I have recently been looking into it and I was wondering if there is any advantage that can be taken of this format. Is it documented by Apple ? I couldn't find anything related to this at developer.apple.com... Second of all: it looks like Apple didn't took advantage of having an XML format. The main part of the file (which is a plist by the way) is an array that contains an unsorted set of all the objects used in the nib. Each bucket of the array can either be :

- a string that represents either a class name, a selector, a font name, a point/size/rect, a menu title, a plain string, etc... - a dictionary per object that stores the connections and a lot of other informations, pointing to another bucket, and so on, until you end up to a string.

Basically, I think Apple stores the graph of objects and the connections between them, and does that by flattening the graph in a random order and storing the result in an array. The result is that instead of having a tree-like structure, one has to deal with a flat structure, moving back and forth between records that link to each others, which is a bit annoying when trying to read a very large file and then trying to automate the process.

Someone also told me that nibs stored in XML format take longer to load, although I couldn't verify this by myself.

I'm not asking for tips on how to read the file (although if anyone succeeded in doing that, it would be great to give me pointers), or if I even should be trying to read the file. The fact that the file is in XML should allow anyone to try poking around it. What I would like to know is if there is any advantage for developers to store theirs nibs as XML ? Why does XML export exist in the first place if it is this hard to make use of it ? _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Cocoa-dev mailing list (email@hidden) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: This email sent to email@hidden Follow-Ups: Re: Nib XML format question From: Keith Wilson <email@hidden> Re: Nib XML format question From: glenn andreas <email@hidden> Prev by Date: Re: Applescript command and sdef Next by Date: NSArrays comparison Previous by thread: Unable to access customized NSView's accessor method Next by thread: Re: Nib XML format question Index(es): Date Thread