Solipsism Gradient

Seems to be months since I pointed at a test, so here’s one.

My result is obvious:

You speak eloquently and have seemingly read every
book ever published. You are a fountain of
endless (sometimes useless) knowledge, and
never fail to impress at a party.

What people love: You can answer almost any
question people ask, and have thus been
nicknamed Jeeves.

What people hate: You constantly correct their
grammar and insult their paperbacks.

What Kind of Elitist Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Rainer Brockerhoff wrote:

…but seems to working quite well.

Hah. That was somewhat premature… I tried to put some new features into my RBSplitView, and found several bugs in the process. The main addition – an option to force subviews to always have a dimension multiple of some integer – failed after several days of beating all available neurons against it. It’s just too complex and I have urgent things to do elsewhere.

So, if you’re interested, you can download it from the above link, and please let me know if you find something wrong – or even if it works spectacularly well. Meanwhile, I plan to resume work on XRay, using the new view, of course, early next week.

Fast update: autosaving subview states is now working in the RBSplitView, and I fixed a couple of bugs. It proved harder to do than I supposed, but seems to working quite well.

I wrote before the trip:
Rainer Brockerhoff wrote:

Time for another update on XRay 2.0.

…The main tool for the user to adapt the interface to personal needs will be the split view paradigm. Vertically, the window will be divided into several splits, most of which will have subsplits.

…So much for trying to fix NSSplitView. After examining and discarding some other fixes floating around on the net, I decided to reimplement NSSplitView from the ground up as a NSView subclass. This, in turn, launched me into writing an Interface Builder palette so I could set up my window as usual.

…Still, I haven’t given up and I’m now deciding whether I should build my window entirely programmatically or spend a “Support Incident” at Apple ADC to get an official workaround… stay tuned.

As I took my old iBook on the trip, I was able to devote some time every day – after the “official” touristy duties – to reimplementing the split view. (The official class name is now “RBSplitView”, by the way.)

The view implementation itself was actually quite straightforward, although complex; it was the IBPalette that took most of the time. It took quite a bit of testing and checking unsupported APIs to find out a way that works for most of the expected Interface Builder actions, and in the end I managed to do it all by using only the “normal” APIs.

If you’re interested, the current version of RBSplitView and the associated IBPalette will always be downloadable here. Xcode 1.5 running on Panther is required.

Highlights:

• Full reimplementation of split view, not a subclass
• Not a 100% drop-in replacement for NSSplitView though
• Uses container subviews for each split
• Allows easy nesting of split views with automatic 4-way thumbs
• Source and IBPalette available under modified BSD license.

Still to do:

• Autosaving of subview state
• Separate documentation
• 100% glitch-free working in Interface Builder

Comments will be extremely welcome!

Posted by Rafael Fischmann:

Rainer Brockerhoff wrote:

We’re back, extremely tired but otherwise OK. 1784 e-mails are downloading while I type this. More soon…

Welcome!

We’re back, extremely tired but otherwise OK. 1784 e-mails are downloading while I type this. More soon…

Posted by Rainer Brockerhoff (away):
At the public library in Verona (Italy).

The cruise was excellent all-in-all and on the 20th we rented a car in Milano, driving eastwards towards Venezia (Venice). For the first time on our trip the weather was bad, so we had to pause more frequently than planned.

Anyway, we found an excellent bed&breakfast place in the hills near Verona, so we’ll be staying there for at least 3 days, using it as a base to make day trips to Verona, Venezia (tomorrow), and perhaps Padova to the South.

More anon…

Posted by Rainer Brockerhoff (away):
From a small Internet Café in Limassol, Cyprus…

…there’s little time, so I’ll have to be brief. Starting from Savona near Genova (Italy), we passed through Naples – where we visited the digs at Herculanum – then Messina on Sicily and a brief trip to the Etna; then, yesterday, a whole-day trip to the Pyramids in Giza (Egypt).

The weather’s been excellent, and all’s well. There is an Internet connection on the ship, but at the usual abusive pricing (30 Euros per hour), so I won’t use it for now. Hopefully next week I’ll have the opportunity to post more.