Steve Troughton-SmithWith all the buzz about Final Cut, it sure would have been a good time for me to have had my clapperboard app ready to go, huh? š
I think I can take a sprint at this before WWDC, might make some progress. I have Freeform prepped, Xcode open. I have a bunch of things to do before I can get this to a shippable 1.0, including changing the core navigation & library structure, and removing all the SwiftUI I added in the early days. Fortunately, past-me was smart enough to port the whole project to Swift already, so itās ready for me to pick up and run with it
Since I started this project in 2019, the design language I use in my apps has shifted a bit ā and that of iPadOS, too. Restructuring it is kinda fun
If I'm to cut features to get to a ship target, itāll primarily be by not including iPhone & Mac support at launch. Even so, I'll be progressing all three platforms at the same time as I go, as iPad still needs multiple resizable windows and compact/regular size class switching.
No platforms means I don't have to have a sync strategy out of the gate, tooā¦ š
Working a little on my editing modes and interactions, reducing the gesture overload I had in earlier versions and splitting them out into distinct states (rearranging vs text/field editing, etc)
Fewer mystery meat gestures and weird animations, more buttons
Finding the right SF Symbols for my use case is impossible, so I think I'm going to use this form instead
My module library was a UITableView, of all things. Well that had to go
As I flesh out the rest of the UI, I'm starting to see ways for this to make sense on macOS, even if the use cases are very different to iPhone or iPad ā I didn't get that impression from the last two development sprints I did on this (in 2019, and 2020)
Quick UI roundup; I can see a path towards completing and shipping this app before WWDC, on iPad. I don't know that I'll be able to hit that target before distraction comes knocking, but it's worth a try. I've made quite a bit of progress in the past day, and it's starting to look good
Doing away with the context menus frees up some confusion with Pencil usage. Trying out a dashed line pattern too, though it might still need some tweaking. I also cleaned up the @takeoneapp Mastodon profile a tad
Here's a bunch of screenshots from the early development of @takeoneapp, in June 2019, since I haven't posted them over here. Thatās before I'd started work on Broadcasts or Pastel, in a very different era of iPad app development. In hindsight, the improvements to the iPad SDK vis a vis UIKit & Mac Catalyst have been tremendous in the past 4 years. All of that effort is going to pay off for an AR headset built around the iPadOS app platform, if the rumors are true
Reimplemented the stripes color picker as a collection view, works nicely š
Those popovers adapt to my favorite sheet style on iPhone, custom title and close button included š
Very easy to add new palettes too ā I can copy paste them into the codebase directly from @pastelapp š
End of day 2! @takeoneapp is starting to look so good that if I don't ship this at the end of this sprint, I will be so mad at myself. Apart from the major areas I have yet to implement, I think the UI is nearly at a production-ready level ā you'd easily mistake it for a shipping app. I maaay do a TestFlight run of this before release, but no promises. I expect pricing to be very similar to Broadcasts and Pastel, so free to try + $5 ish IAP to make more than one board (or something like that)
Instead of struggling with PencilKit for the rest of the day, I went ahead and built a template picker instead. Another item checked off the todo list ā
One way for me to punt the PencilKit scaling issue down the road a bit is to ship with UIRequiresFullScreen=YES š¤ It would mean explicitly opting out of splitscreen and Stage Manager resizing for the time being, but that actually might be OK in this case? It's a very fullscreen-centric app, and that changes a release blocker to minor user annoyance. May just be the way to go
Just because the individual windows need fullscreen doesn't mean I can't still do multiwindowing ā it actually works quite nicely in Stage Manager
Clarko@stroughtonsmith 100%
I dunno whoās using a windowed clapper
@stroughtonsmith 100%
I dunno whoās using a windowed clapper
Josh Wold@stroughtonsmith @takeoneapp This looks so cool!
sirshannon@stroughtonsmith Iām still sad from when the last TestFlight version expired.
@sirshannon that was a different app record, too, so old testers will not automatically be invited and will have to sign up again for this one
Pierre@stroughtonsmith @takeoneapp this is fun to follow along :)
Jelly@stroughtonsmith bee movie, except it's a digital clapper board
Jan@stroughtonsmith which font are you using for the digits? Iām using a similar font for https://www.railcontrol.pro, but digit one doesnāt render as nicely as yours š
@jncn it was a font once, but theyāre PNGs now with some Photoshop effects
@stroughtonsmith Thanks! That's the one Iām using too. Unfortunately it's not monospaced and 1 is not aligned to the right, but smaller and centered.
Your solution to convert it to an image is pretty smart. Will try!
Your solution to convert it to an image is pretty smart. Will try!
Trevor Kay@stroughtonsmith Have them sync between Take One and Pastel :P
tarasis@stroughtonsmith looks really nice
Andre Louis@stroughtonsmith would love to know what 'This App' is, but sadly, no alt-text in your images so I can't get excited about it. Mind adding some alt-text for those of us who are optically challenged?
Adam Overholtzer@stroughtonsmith Please make the clapper break out of the NSWindow frame. This will be a good use of your time š
@adam I refuse š
Luca Bartoletti@stroughtonsmith lovely state transition there
Brendan@TapForms šØš¦@stroughtonsmith I thought the icon you had there seemed appropriate.
Maximilian@stroughtonsmith would a squircle look out of place among the rounded buttons for the pen icon? Feels a little too big for the circle shape š
Inferis@stroughtonsmith make your own. ;)
MatĆas@stroughtonsmith nice, it also makes sense in being similar to UIBarButtonItem.SystemItem.edit. Maybe it should also switch between "Editā/"Doneā?
Julian Kussman@stroughtonsmith do you follow Clarko? Heās building something for this https://mastodon.social/@clarko/110339563150450447
Jarrod Blundy@stroughtonsmith More like this, everyone, please!
Blake Helms 
@stroughtonsmith The animation is flawless!
Henrique Felix@stroughtonsmith Iām keen to use this app in my video productions. Do you think it is possible to have a ādark modeā? Maybe in the future?
Rafael Schmitt@stroughtonsmith Looking great
š Tim MahoneyYou going to WWDC? Want to talk about your future sync strategy?
@_tim______ unfortunately not! But if somebody were to, say, update the CloudKit GitHub examples with canonical ways of how to safely merge/resolve changes both ways after a device has spent time offline, I would be a lot happier to proceed š That fear is a major blocker on several of my projects right nowā¦ https://github.com/apple/sample-cloudkit-privatedb-sync
I donāt blame you for being scared of that scenario.
What sort of data are you working with? Complex data types with complex merging strategies? Lists/graphs that the user can modify concurrently and expect them to merge properly? Or a more simple last-writer wins?
@_tim______ most of my data objects are flat by design; not expecting concurrent uses on different devices, but I do want to do the right thing if a device has been used without internet for a period. Last write wins is probably enough for individual record values. I just want to be able to do this w/o giving up and using Core Data š„² I wish there were a simplified record layer that 'just workedā and didn't require antiquated boilerplate. There's a reason so many devs struggle with iCloud sync!
@stroughtonsmith is the project UIKit or some SwiftUI now?
@JediMax I added some SwiftUI a couple years ago; I'm ripping it out now
DĪNIEL TŹMĪN@stroughtonsmith as someone who uses these slates to sync picture & sound in post, may I suggest that the clapper sticks actually animate the motion of the clap, like a physical clapper? so there is a clear visual state in the footage for before clap / moment of clap / after clap. that would make it easy to scrub through the footage & find the clap frame.
like the top stick isnāt visible before the clap, then on command, 1-2 frames of the top stick coming down, then clap?