Lets say you write a plugin that has a special patch, call it uh, v002
Foo for arguments sake :)
v002 Foo has some input and output parameters, these are the standard
"I can connect them to other things via noodles/patch-coords" in QC
input and output ports. However, if I decide to make the plugin have a
Settings inspector view, ( a custom view like the interpolation patch
- you can see this by going to settings / Apple-2 when you have the
patch inspector open when viewing the interpolation patch, the
special ), controls I make in there are limited to being touched/
fiddled with in Quartz Composer Editor only.
Since controls in the Settings pane have no external input or output
publishable ports, this means you cannot:
a) programatically set them from within Quartz Composer
b) publish them so that an external, Quartz Composer friendly
application can use a custom UI to make controls and actually send
values to those params in the view
c) limits settings in that view from being changed outside of Quartz.
This is why I don't personally make plugins that do that (have custom
setting user interfaces), and have all controls publishable as inputs
ports so you can use them from 3rd party apps and programatically edit
them. This makes them end user friendly so you can control them from
QC, and lets the composition or plugin be used in apps that leverage
QC much more easily.
Now, my proposed solution to being able to 'get at' these Settings
panes that are locked to only being available in Quartz Composer
Editor (as far as I know you cant get at them any other way), is to
extend the QCRenderer/QCPlugin API to allow applications to get an
NSView object from the Plugin and draw it in their host app. This
alleviates all of the listed limitations from above, so I as an app
developer can let you get at and manipulate the custom look up curve
in the interpolation patch within my nice, shiny, beautiful Cocoa App
and not just have it hidden away in QC.
So, as far as I am aware, there is no public way of getting at those
plugin custom controls from a Cocoa App, and since so much of what is
lovely about Quartz Composer is the app integration, thats a real shame.
Maybe thats a bit more clear where I am coming from?
On Oct 22, 2009, at 8:32 PM, Keith Lang wrote:
Vade
Would you be so kind as to extrapolate on what you said… for the
lurking non-programmers like me please?
Being able to get an NSView object from a plugin and being able to
drop it into a nice designed UI would be really cool, especially
for patches
like interpolate and timeline with interesting parameters.).
Are you saying it your suggestion is to allow 3rd party QC interfaces
to replace/augment the current inspector interfaces in patches like
Timeline? That is, to have the very interface elements of the QC
Editor be QC’s themselves?
Keith
On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 11:13 AM, vade <[email protected]> wrote:
Just as a developer and an end user, I really frown upon using view
controllers for custom QC patches. The reason is simple as this:
you cannot publish controls exposed in the view controller to the
host app
since they have no outlets or inlets, nor can you publish the view
itself to
the host app*
In short, if your patch has controls, please make them standard
input ports,
so they can be used with 3rd party Quartz friendly apps by other
devs.
Just saying :). Why not make your controls parameters?
*(this is actually a pending feature request of mine, and i think
would be
awesome. Being able to get an NSView object from a plugin and being
able to
drop it into a nice designed UI would be really cool, especially
for patches
like interpolate and timeline with interesting parameters.).
On Oct 22, 2009, at 5:31 PM, Milton Aupperle wrote:
So we have a catch 22 situation here. The device doesn't get
accessed from
the -createViewController until the -startExecution method gets
called
because it hasn't been opened yet and -createViewController is
already
allocated by the plugin so it's all set to fail!. And if device is
released
in the -stopExecution call, then it once again can not be accessed
at all in
-createViewController. This is just a very poor user experience -
I expect
Apple to be better than this kludge!
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