Would an XML based presentation foundation help you?

[mario.muja]

Dear Friends,
during the last years I have developed Windows applications using the MS Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), that allows to describe user interfaces using XML files.

When I began to study the iPhone SDK, I had a very hard time with Interface Builder and I missed the possibility to declaratively describe my iPhone user interfaces in XML files.

Therefore, I started to write a code generator to convert XML user interface descriptions to Objective-C code.

I have now published my first results on SourceForge at Mario Muja / Documentation / Home

Examples can be found under Mario Muja / Documentation / Examples

What do you think about this approach?
Is an XML based iPhone presentation foundation useful?
Would you like to see improved releases?

I really appreciate your feedback.

Best Regards,
Mario Muja

[jNoxx]

I definitly will check it out later man
Thanks if its of any use x)

[TUX2K]

xib files are XML.

[mario.muja]

Originally Posted by TUX2K

xib files are XML.

Thanks for taking the time.

Yes, it is XML. However, we cannot easily change it without IB.

I would like to have a place, where I can write <Switch /> and it simply works and creates a control with acceptable defaults set.

Add a switch to a View.XIB and see what you get. I have inserted it below. Full of references and IDs. Unmanagable.

Having a XML schema that we create on our own also saves a lot of time.

Writing <View Name="MyView" /> creates a new UIView and UIViewController complete with headers and implementation. No clicking in the IDE whatsoever.

Nested <StackPanel /> allow for flexible layout. All controls automatically positioned and sized. Here I use fragments of the MoSync project.

Navigation between views is also delivered without any extra work.

All the code for the UINavigationController is automatically created when you do a

<LoadView Name="MyView" />

Add a property Scrollable="YES" to a StackPanel and you get the functionality that you know from a UIScrollView.

Together we can do anything. I publish the XSL templates, which implement the code generation and we can improve it.

So, you are free to add new XML elements or attributes that lead to generation of obj-c code that you would otherwise need to write manually.

I will document the templates to make this easier.

The code that I have published is not complete. It is not ready. And most probably it contains a lot of bugs.

However: I am following a vision of simplicity that I cannot find in similar form in the SDK. I highly appreciate your feedback and support.

Best Regards,
Mario

============================
<object class="IBUISwitch" id="424573381">
<reference key="NSNextResponder" ref="191373211"/>
<int key="NSvFlags">292</int>
<string key="NSFrame">{{170, 90}, {94, 27}}</string>
<reference key="NSSuperview" ref="191373211"/>
<reference key="NSWindow"/>
<bool key="IBUIOpaque">NO</bool>
<string key="targetRuntimeIdentifier">IBCocoaTouchFramewor k</string>
<int key="IBUIContentHorizontalAlignment">0</int>
<int key="IBUIContentVerticalAlignment">0</int>
<bool key="IBUIOn">YES</bool>
</object>

[dany_dev]

maybe can usefull to create full dynamics gui from a server, but really not so common.