xibless - Get rid of XIBs and XCode¶
xibless is a library that generates Objective-C code that builds Cocoa UIs. The goal of this library is to replace XIBs in XCode and, if you want, get rid of XCode altogether.
With xibless, instead of designing UIs with a WYSIWYG editor, you build them in a Python script, similarly to what you do when you build Qt UIs without the Designer. For example, a script like this:
result = Window(330, 110, "Tell me your name!")
nameLabel = Label(result, text="Name:")
nameField = TextField(result, text="")
helloLabel = Label(result, text="")
button = Button(result, title="Say Hello")
nameLabel.width = 45
nameLabel.moveTo(Pack.UpperLeft)
nameField.moveNextTo(nameLabel, Pack.Right, align=Pack.Middle)
nameField.fill(Pack.Right)
helloLabel.moveNextTo(nameLabel, Pack.Below, align=Pack.Left)
helloLabel.fill(Pack.Right)
button.moveNextTo(helloLabel, Pack.Below, align=Pack.Right)
nameField.setAnchor(Pack.UpperLeft, growX=True)
helloLabel.setAnchor(Pack.UpperLeft, growX=True)
button.setAnchor(Pack.UpperRight)
would generate Objective-C code that looks like this:
The first part of the script creates the widgets and the second part place them in the window.
Although xibless is written in Python, the Objective-C code it generates has no Python dependency, so this tool is suitable for any Cocoa developer.
xibless runs on Python 2.7 and up. This means that if you’re on OS X 10.7 or newer, you can use the built-in Python. Otherwise, you’ll have to install a more recent version of Python.
Early Development¶
xibless is in very early development and the number of rough edges at the moment are incalculable. There are no error message for invalid UI scripts, so it might be very hard, for now, to figure out why your scripts don’t work.
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