This project demonstrates some techniques and possible issues when creating layouts completely programmatically. I wanted to create a simple window app without using GORM and in the process explored different ways of lining things up in rows and columns.
The target platform is Linux, with GCD (dispatch) and ARC. clang is the preferred compiler.
By looking at some example tests, I found GSHbox and GSVbox which do exactly what I want. However, it seems the inclusion of the header files for these classes do not work well with ARC (-fobjc-arc).
I wanted to explore the use of NSStackView, but got could not get very far with that.
When constraints are implemented, I hope to include some examples using those too. Also and example with NSGridView should be included one day.
The demonstrations here all create a little "Log Viewer" widget with a scroll bar and text area for entering new log messages. There is also a background timer sending new messsages to the Log. A user should be able to add new messages by pressing the "Send" button. The window should be able to be resized, and should have a minimum size. This is implemented in 10-manual-layout.
In examples 20-gsvbox-compile-error, 30-gsvbox-with-decls and 40-stack-view the previous functionality is augmented with a "Clear" button to clear the log. The button is placed in an HBOX and is arranged with the Log Viewer in a VBOX to demonstrate some simple layout. Each of these currently demonstrates some sort of limitation.
I also investigated NSGridView, but didn't get very far with that, so there is no sample here.
The hope is that by sharing these, the sub-projects with the limitations can be investigated, and workarounds can be shared. I'd like to add more examples showing other ways to construct views programmatically in the future.
Please contribute an example programmatic layout if you can.
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10-manual-layout - A view with a Button, a TextBox and Scrolling TextView. Completely manual layout put in a window. Works fine.
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20-gsvbox-compile-error - This was inspired by
NSSlider Testin https://github.com/gnustep/tests-examples. (See the figure below.) That example showed the use of GSVbox and GSHbox for simple row and column layout. This technique seems fine. However, it does not compile well with ARC.
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30-gsvbox-with-decls - This variation hides the implementation of GSVbox and GSTable by creating a local declaration of just the methods needed. This seems to make GSVbox and GSHbox usable with ARC.
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40-stack-view - This variation aims to be a more modern implementation of the rows and columns using NSStackView. It does not currently seem that NSStackView can be initialized and used programmatically.