Swift for Developement

I am going to assume since it was not mentioned otherwise that conversations, tip and tricks about using Swift for iPhone/iPad/AppleTv/AppleWatch is an acceptable line for topics here.

you betcha !
no “Xojo only” filter on here

From the announcements about IfNotNil

If Not Nil is a forum dedicated to cross-platform development, primarily with the Xojo programming language although we welcome discussion about any tool that makes building apps easier.

That pretty much what I thought, but didn’t know if the intent was to be “Mostly Xojo, with stuff that might fit in with it” or “Discussions about Programming tools, for example Xojo”. I see that most of the people I see are from the Xojo forum.

What I am looking for is others with an express interest in Swift, regardless of experience. I for example am self taught, loathe Interface Builder and Autolayout, yet have been sucessful in creating various iOS apps in 100% code. And would like to chat with others, to provide the ideas I have had, the lessons I have learned so far (no expert to be sure), and to also learn with others.

For example the other day I had a need for a MsgBox control and an InputBox (ala VB). both of course can be created by using UIAlertController… but the level of customization was not there (I needed to apply themes so they matched the visual aspects of certain apps more closely).

This taught me how one can created a “somewhat modal control” that can be called from any main view, by just adding as little as 3 lines of code to call it.

yeah initially the site is mostly Xojo folks but wince Xojo is really about x-platform programming there are lots of other tools that fit in with that

so if/when you see questions about it feel free to reply

unfortunately swift isnt used very widely as an x-platform tool - it may get there

A post in the tutorials about how to do these things in Swift would be a decent place for those instructive type posts

True Swift is not xPlat… and while there is open source efforts for Windows etc… they all so far fall flat in the UI department

I too was going to suggest the tutorials section. Am a newbie at Swift myself, so very happy to see some tips&tricks …

I was hoping more for discussion… as opposed to just posting tutorials…

Hi @DaveS.

Like @npalardy says, feel free to talk about Swift as much as you like here.

I really like Swift as a language and if the Windows effort was further along I had planned on trying to build a tool essentially cloning Xojo’s IDE but using Swift as the underlying language but it looks like the Windows port is currently a literal one-man-show so who knows how long it’ll take to get to a usable state.

I am in the active process of doing EXACTLY that… but it willl emit Xcode for iOS, macOS, and once those work, it will add AppleTV and AppleWatch

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That sounds awesome Dave.

In essence then, are you essentially “just” trying to simplify Xcode for a broader audience?

Well the first audience is myself…
If it turns out to be a stable product at that time… then maybe.
I have most of the IDE written and mostly working for creating a iOS or macOS project
and I have the Xcode builder working from previous verions of this same project.

Is the IDE written in Xojo?

At this time , yes (2019r1.1)… but the plan is to use the app to write a version of itself so the final product is a Swift program

If you are interested, I could send you a compiled version of a previous incarnation (creates iOS only). It has bugs, but I still use it to create templates to work from.

It DOES create fully operational Xcode projects … although for GUI only… with this version any “logic” has to be added manually… but it still says a ton of work…

And note… the next version writes cleaner code than this… but it will give you the idea

Yeah I’d love to see it @DaveS. Sounds really cool. Feel free to PM me.

well I tried sending a PM, but the “send” button was off the screen so I couldn’t

send me a private with your email address

Done.