Re: Auto Layout Problems
Re: Auto Layout Problems
- Subject: Re: Auto Layout Problems
- From: Thomas Wetmore <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2015 12:46:58 -0400
> On Aug 27, 2015, at 11:17 AM, Dave <email@hidden> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
>> The more I have gotten into auto-layout the more I am grokking the underlying linear algebra, and the more I am understanding what’s going on.
>
> I actually get what it’s trying to do, it’s the XCode interface that is just plain Naff! It adds constraints more than once and it’s next to impossible to update them, so I end up deleting everything and started over.
Constraints are easy to update with Xcode in two or three different ways. But I will admit, that the first few times I tried to use them, I also ended up deleting everything and starting over. I hope those days are over now.
I had to look up “naff” in the urban dictionary, since I am now so very retired that I have been out of the slang loop for years. The definition I found is that it is British slang for stupid and various other terrible things. I disagree with that.
> The thing is I can do what I want to do without using AutoLayout, so I’m wondering why I’m bothering to put myself through this pain for no real gain, especially when it’s just a Naff implementation of the UI in XCode that is causing the problems. I’m wondering if it might be better forget about XCode/IB and do it all manually in code, but if I do that, I may as well just ditch it and go back to the old ways of doing things.
I had to go two ways. Some of my auto-contraints come from the Xcode edited XIBs and some come from code. In order to handle resizing and moving views, I found that I had to add/delete/change constraints on mouse down and mouse up events, and I found that the programmatic API works well for those situations. For the constraints within views, e.g., the scroll views, outline views, text views making up their contents, I was able to stick with Xcode’s IB’s auto-constraint approach.
> I’m really disappointed to discover what a mess it is to be honest, especially after reading all the hype about it…….
I have also been disappointed on how much difficulty I have had when incorporating new Apple technologies. I have bitten the Swift bullet and write everything new in Swift and am rapidly converting my old code bases to Swift. This has led to some mighty frustrating situations where I have stared at the screen or “slept on it” for hours, and where my debugging and workarounding ingenuity have been pushed to the limit. I suppose perseverance and bloody obstinance are two of my traits. The WWDC videos show easy examples and often don’t dive deep into the harder stuff. Sometimes there is sample code that does something similar to what you need; often not. Sometimes you can Google others’ solutions. (Warning: “when you take other peoples’ advice, you make other peoples’ mistakes” [poster on a wall in my old graduate student office].) And I find the Apple documentation very helpful at times. And I love Dash.
However, when all is said and done, I blame my problems on my own inadequacies, not on my tools. As far as I am concerned, Xcode is the greatest thing since indoor plumbing, air conditioning and curbside trash pickup. I wrote my first program in Fortran in 1966 using a teletype model 33 machine to produce source code on paper tape. A teletype was my first IDE. My first hard disk was a piece of plywood on the wall with nails on a 4 inch grid, each nail holding a coil of paper tape. I cannot express how happy I am to be able to enjoy the fruits of fifty years of IDE improvement.
Tom W
>
> Cheers
> Dave
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