I wanted to create a tiny app with just a few controls and create a layout programmatically. I began by testing NSGridView and NSStackView, but did not succeed with those. In an older "tests-examples" project, I found some older programs that looked reasonable, so that took me down a path of using some older GNUstepGUI views.
FYI - my target environment is Linux, GCD, ARC, clang.
What I believe I found is the following:
- NSStackView is not ready for a completely programmatic layout. Constraint based layout is in the works but is not quite ready.
- GNUstepGUI GSHbox and GSVbox are sufficient, but introduce a compiler error when their headers are included in a file compiled with ARC. There is a workaround.
- setting the positions of frames explicitly works and is actually pretty simple
What I found is that it's difficult to find some straightforward examples of layout that does not involve an Interface Builder of one form or another.
I put together some examples illustrating these successes and issues. If you're interested in this topic, perhaps you can help create some simple examples of layout that work in a modern ObjC environment.
Thanks,
Tom