Interface Builder Alternatives etc
Interface Builder Alternatives etc
- Subject: Interface Builder Alternatives etc
- From: Josh de Lioncourt <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 16:19:42 -0800
I posted on this topic previously, but it needs to be revisited. I
hope someone out there can help me find a practical solution.
I'm a blind programmer. I develop mainly under Windows, but have been
wanting to transition to Mac development, as many blind computer users
are moving that way. Plus, I'm a Mac fan anyway.
Interface Builder is essentially useless with VoiceOver, (Apple's
built-in screen reading solution), due to its highly visual usage. So
far as I can tell, there is no way to build an interface with it and
avoid dragging and dropping controls. That means, I can't create NIB
files with it, and I lose all the benefits that come with having NIB
files.
So, a nice user here on this list gave me some sample code of how to
build a basic interface, purely in source. It was all fine and well,
but such a method has a huge number of disadvantages.
1. You lose all the advantages of NIB's (i.e. faster load times, ease
of localization, etc.)
2. Source code building of interfaces is virtually undocumented. It's
extremely difficult to work out the best way of doing things, when
virtually no one builds their interfaces this way.
3. Development time is substantially increased by having to build
interfaces from scratch in the source code.
4. This puts my own development completely out of sync with the rest
of the Cocoa software development universe.
It seems to me that, with Interface Builder or some other tool, there
has got to be some sort of utility for editing NIB files out there.
Something that gives a list of properties in text form of all of the
objects in the NIB file and allows you to adjust the positioning,
look, and other properties without relying on drag-and-drop.
This is the most frustrating situation I've ever faced in nearly
twenty years of software development. Apple came a long way by making
XCode nearly entirely accessible with VoiceOver, but without access to
Interface Builder, it's not yet practical.
If you can help...offer suggestions...anything at all, please do. I'm
still learning the ins and outs of Cocoa itself, but that is getting
increasingly difficult without being able to build apps with a UI to
experiment. Cocoa books and manuals constantly tell you to build an
interface in IB...connect this UI element to this method, etc. All
useless if you can't get past the UI design step.
Josh de Lioncourt
email@hidden
...my other mail provider is an owl...
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