Item 6854754 94/08/31 12:10 From: DARREN_SMITH@NEXT.COM@INET# Internet Gateway Subject: Announcing InterfaceViewer Beta Cc: news_from_next_ext@NeXT.COM NEW DEVELOPMENT TOOL: InterfaceViewer F. HEINZ consultora is proud to introduce a pre-release version of InterfaceViewer, the user interface documentation, tool for NEXTSTEP developers. The multi-architecture program may be retrieved from by anonymous FTP from: ftp.informatik.uni-muenchen.de, under the name pub/comp/platforms/next/Developer/apps/InterfaceViewer.0.1.NI.b.tar .gz and from other NEXTSTEP archive sites. This fully functional pre-release version will stop working on September 15th. By then, the final commercial release and a new demo with the full feature set will be available from the same sources. What does InterfaceViewer do? InterfaceViewer solves a problem common to all NEXTSTEP development: documenting the contents of InterfaceBuilder documents (the ubiquitous nib files). While IB offers great tools for creating user interfaces, its capabilities are very limited when it comes to finding out the inner workings of an existing nib file, or documenting the contents of such a file along with the rest of the source code for a project. IV is useful when you want to use one of NeXT's great mini-examples to find out something about the AppKit: the source code is usually easy to follow and profusely documented, but you still have to painfully untangle the connections inside the nib files one by one before you understand what the program does. It is also a boon when you get someone new in your team, and she has to catch up with what the rest of the group has done so far. She can just take the nib files to IV and play with the connections until she knows what's in there. It is most useful at achieving other minor feats such as creating high-quality EPS representations of you UI elements for inclusion in you user documentation or at making poster- or blackboard-sized documents for showing during team work. And InterfaceViewer is the only way to completely document the working of your system (unless you enjoy doing diagrams of the user interface by hand... :-). How does it do it? To discover the contents of a nib file, just open the file with InterfaceViewer. What you get is a canvas with a diagram of all objects and all connections of the nib file on it. You get to see it all at once, everything is neatly laid out and clearly labeled. And it works with any nib file at all, even those that contain custom objects loaded from IB palettes---all you have to do is load the palette into InterfaceViewer too, and it just works! And what can I do with such a drawing? While you work on the screen, InterfaceViewer does a lot to help you read the diagram it created: you can selectively disable the display of connectors according to criteria such as ``I want to see only connectors of class DBTableConnector or IBOutletConector that depart from the currently selected objects''. You can change the graphics attributes of the connectors, change the arrangement of the objects, resize the canvas, get the diagram just as you like it. And while you are at it, let the auto-router lay out the connections for you, so you don't have to position each segment on the page yourself. And you can print the diagram to post on the wall or in your documentation records, too. InterfaceViewer will break the canvas into pages according to the page layout and scale. Or you can save the image for later reference, either in InterfaceViewer's own format, or as an EPS image or in Diagram!2 format. You can also cut and paste parts of InterfaceViewer's diagram into other documents for your documentation records, or to get high-quality PostScript images of your windows for inclusion in you manuals. About F. HEINZ Consultora F. HEINZ Consutora is a privately-held network consulting and software development company located in Cordoba, Argentina. We are committed to the production of high-quality solutions for NEXTSTEP users and developers, and to the development and deployment of NEXTSTEP-based customer solutions. Our product line currently includes Dots, the printer driver for non- PostScript printers under NEXTSTEP, and InterfaceViewer, the user interface documentation program for NEXTSTEP developers. FOR MORE INFORMATION contact us at our development labs in F. HEINZ Consultora Benigno Acosta 4528 5009 V. Centenario Cordoba, Argentina Tel+Fax: (+54 51) 81 75 97 E-Mail: info@heinz.com =END=