KATI

KTUIKit 0.9.0

I’m pleased to (finally!) introduce KTUIKit, an open source framework and Interface Builder plug-in project. The goal of the project is to address some of the issues that I’ve brought up in previous posts on this blog:

Incorporating NSViewController into Cocoa’s controller system

Replacing NSView’s Autoresizing mechanism for the layout of views and controls

Styling of views (not controls, i wish…)

KTUIKit currently includes the XS-Controllers, KTView, subclasses of many of the standard Cocoa controls, KTLayoutManager and KTStyleManager. The Interface Builder plug-in provides a GUI for the layout manager and style manager.

This is still very much a work-in-progress. Don’t try to use it in your own project yet! There are bugs - especially in the Interface Builder ‘Style’ inspector, which is basically still unusable for anyone other than the person that programmed it… Nevertheless, I thought I’d go ahead and put the project out there - incomplete, with bugs and all.

If you want to check it out in action, you can download an example project. The project shows how to use the layout and style managers in the view controller classes as well as in Interface Builder. If you want to open the nib files, you’ll have to do a little bit of work to get Interface Builder to load the plug-in:

Build the KTUIKit Xcode project that came with the example project

Copy the framework, which is located in a directory called “Uninstalled Products” in the Xcode project’s build directory, into your ~Library/Frameworks directory

Launch Interface Builder and go to its Preferences window

Go to the “Plug-ins” tab and hit the Add (+) button

Navigate IB to the copy of the framework in your ~Library/Frameworks directory

Hit ‘Open’

KATI will show up in your list of plug-ins and its library objects will show up in your library.

The Example Project

This example is very similar to the view controller example projects I’ve posted in the past. It’s basically a window composed of several nib files, pieced together by several view controllers. The difference is that it uses KTUIKit’s views and their layout and style managers.

The main thing to notice is how durable the layout is. Make the window as small as you can and as big as you can - drag the split view dividers all the way to zero and back. Nothing breaks. Everything is where it should be. There are also examples in the code of using the layout manager’s relative layout configurations - like “filling” and “floating”. There is no extra layout calculation code in the view controllers and KTView is never subclassed in the example project.

I’ve created a page dedicated to KTUIKit. It contains information about how to get it from Google Code and about using the framework in an Xcode project.

If you have comments or feedback or if you’re interested in contributing to its development please feel free to email me. Here’s to a quick move to 1.0!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 11:21 pm and is filed under KTUIKit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

12 Responses to “KTUIKit 0.9.0”

1. Lee Says:
   November 13th, 2008 at 4:42 am

   This looks great!

2. ssteiner Says:
   November 15th, 2008 at 5:30 am

   This looks awesome!

   I’m moving my interface to your code from RBSplitView and will let you know if I run into any problems and will provide any patches/fixes I create to get things to behave the way they “should.”

   Thanks for taking a real good whack at the issues we all know come with ‘vanilla cocoa’, as it were.

3. paisible.fr Says:
   November 16th, 2008 at 10:13 am

   Wonderfull,

   Very good job, I will try to play with it very soon.

   But I have a dream … : another bigger Kit with your KTUIKit and the BWToolkit (http://www.brandonwalkin.com/blog/2008/11/13/introducing-bwtoolkit/)

   Thanks for your work. Regards.

4. Cathy Says:
   November 16th, 2008 at 12:18 pm

   I have the same dream…hm…

5. paisible.fr Says:
   November 16th, 2008 at 2:47 pm

   Yes YOU can !

6. Felix Simoes Says:
   November 20th, 2008 at 12:46 pm

   Great work!!!

   I will surely give it a try.

7. Bergamot Says:
   November 21st, 2008 at 9:30 pm

   Hey, if you and Brandon keep it up, we’ll get pretty close to the framework Apple should have shipped a year ago!

8. dreamcat4 Says:
   November 24th, 2008 at 9:35 pm

   This is just what we’ve been waiting for. Excellent stuff Kati et all very pleased. And yes - likely that you’ll be getting some offerings now to re-integrate little changes / tweaks back into KTUIKit codebase. Hooray!

9. Scott Andrew Says:
   November 28th, 2008 at 8:47 pm

   Loving this, looks promising and moving over to using this now. I have a couple of small observations:

   1.) does the plug-in need to be incorporated in the framework’s resources? Why not build the plugin as a standalone component with the framework embedded? It just seems odd to have the plugin embedded in the framework and included in every application build.

   2.) Getting the color well is hit and miss. Also changing a background color of a view doesn’t trigger the nib as being modified.

   Again this is a great framework, moving my UI to it. Look forward to the upcoming updates and additions.

10. Cathy Says:
    November 29th, 2008 at 1:50 pm

    Hi Scott, thanks for the feedback

    I don’t recommend using the plugin/framework until the 1.0 is released. This is still a buggy beta. It’s very close now - I’ve fixed the color well and made some other improvements to the UI.

    I’ll be updating the release in the next week.

    Thanks again and please feel free to report issues to the Goolge Code issue tracker:
    http://code.google.com/p/ktuikit/issues/list

11. Sam McDonald Says:
    November 29th, 2008 at 10:31 pm

    Looks like some good stuff. Make sure you keep us updated on the 1.0 status.

12. SEO nh Says:
    April 15th, 2009 at 3:20 pm

    Looks good, I will try and update you…

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