Re: Nib XML format question
Re: Nib XML format question
- Subject: Re: Nib XML format question
- From: Keith Wilson <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 13:14:06 +1100
Hi Julien.
An alternative is to use NibReporter - refer web page at http://
nibreporter.berlios.de/
Keith from DownUnder
On 05/03/2006, at 8:08 AM, Julien Silland wrote:
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 ?
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