Platform specifics in the designer - prxrovgy
http://www.realsoftware.com/feedback/viewreport.php?reportid=prxrovgy
What REALbasic lacks to be successful in cross platform developement,
those are things that bite me each and every time, and usually result in
me having to maintain 3 sets of projects.
* Platform specifics for Property Editor. (Should be easy to do, can be
implemented similar as how XCode manages Targets, where there is a
master target, and then you can refine it for specific targets). That is
have one Master set of properties, and then you could for example Switch
to Linux, where all properties that had been specially set for the Linux
could for example be bold faced (again same way as XCode does it).
Simple example of use:
I have Application that is Composite Steel Window on Mac, but on Linux
and Windows it should be white. So there are platform differences where
I would set HasBackColor to true for Linux and Windows only.
(Things go very bad by the way if this property is set in code).
With XCode style platform specifics in the property editor its a mater
of a click to solve problems like this.
Menu designer:
I dont know how many times this needs to be said, the menu designer as
it is does not cut it, I dont even understand why you bothered to have
the show Linux, Windows and Mac mode there as it does very little for
the user.
In almost every app that I have made there are Menus specific to some
platform that simply should not be on the other platforms, and other
cases are Menus placed slightly differently on different platforms. But
the Menu designer solved neither of those problems (Exept placement of 2
or 3 predefined menu types).
It it quite easy to do this properly, by letting the User define a pool
of MenuItems that the app knows about, then in the MenuDesigner for
(Windows, Linux and Mac he would drag in known items from the pool)
Windows might not display all items from the pool but it would not brake
the code since the items would exist even if not displayed, so if
setting that Menu as Enabled in code then it would not generate error on
any platform. In same way the Menus might be differently ordered on Mac
than in Linux.
The new Toolbar Designer:
I have not actually tested it much but it seem to have inherited the
same shallow design as the Menu designer, that is not actually doing
anything to handle platform differences where ordering of buttons might
be different on platforms, or even slightly different commands might be
shown. (Again pool of commands, dragged onto each platform , in any
order like with the Menus could easily solve this)
I have to say that it is a shame that a cross platform developement tool
does not even attempt to target those issues here above, issues that
most of us are getting beat with every day.
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