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PinLayout_principles.md

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PinLayout principles and philosophy

  • Manual layouting (doesn't rely on auto layout).

  • PinLayout exist to be simple and fast as possible! In fact, it is fast as manual layouting. See performance results below.

  • Full control: You're in the middle of the layout process, no magic black box.

    • You can add conditions (if/switch/guard/...) related to the device orientation, device type, traitCollection, animations, ...
    • You can add iterations and enumerations (for/while/forEach/...)
  • Layout one view at a time. Make it simple to code and debug.

  • Concise syntax. Layout most views using a single line.

  • Stateless

    • PinLayout doesn’t add any stored properties to UIView/NSView. It simply computes the view's frame property, one view at a time.
    • Since it is stateless, it can be used with any other layout framework without conflicts. Each view can use the layout system that better suit it (PinLayout, autolayout, flexbox, …)
  • No Auto layout and constraints

    • Constraints are verbose and quite hard for a human brains to understand when there are many views implicated, even with sugar-syntax frameworks.
    • PinLayout positions views as a designer would explain it (eg: “The TextField is below the Label, aligned left, and is its width matches the other view’s width“).
    • No priorities, simply layout views in the order that makes sense. No priorities required.
  • Before applying the new sets of attributes, PinLayout always start with the view’s current frame. So its possible to set the view’s size during the initialization (ex: view.pin.width(100).height(200)), and later only position the view (ex: view.pin.top(10).left(20)). This makes PinLayout really animation friendly.

  • Not too intrusive. PinLayout only adds three properties to existing iOS classes: UIView.pin, UIView.anchor and UIView.edge

  • Minimize as much as possible calculations and constants when layouting views. But it is always possible to add advanced computation if required.

  • Method's name match as much as possible other layout frameworks, including FlexLayout/flexbox, CSS, React Native, …