Re: [Pyobjc-dev] interface builder queries

[b.bum <bb...@ma...>]

On Aug 26, 2003, at 9:28 AM, Ronald Oussoren wrote:
>> 2) How hard is it to generate/manipulate NIBs programmatically?
>>    They're mostly NSArchivered lumps of data, right?  The point behind
>>    this question is that I have a description of various data formats
>>    and it might save time to generate a really clunky interface from
>>    this description, and then turn it into a less clunky interface by
>>    monkeying about in IB (but not have to sort *all* those connections
>>    out by hand).
>
> I don't know, but I'd like to know. Please tell us if you find out :-)

Given that you want to do the manipulation with a goal of writing out a 
NIB file that can subsequently be monkeyed about with in IB, you will 
be nicely surprised.

Look in the InterfaceBuilder.framework.   API is provided for 
making/breaking connections and otherwise manipulating the object graph 
found within a NIB file.   It should provide most/all of the features 
you need.

I would suggest writing an InterfaceBuilder Palette (using PyObjC, of 
course -- but you'll need a framework build of Python) that contains 
the tools needed to modify the object graph of your NIB files (or 
produce the object graph).

Point of reference:   about a year ago, I helped a company port their 
NeXTSTEP 3.3 code and interface files forward to OS X.   We used 
OpenStep 4.2 as a go-between for NIB conversion and, as a result, were 
able to convert-- including object graph manipulation-- all 100+ NIB 
files (20,000+ custom objects across the NIBs) from NS 3.3 to OS X.   
This also required re-arranging views and changing object 
configurations to help convert the NS 3.3 look-n-feel to OS X.

There are some gotchas and tricks, but it does work and works very 
well....

b.bum