Progress on the "Properties Dialog" in the Linkage App
I was traveling for work this week on was able to get some work done on the Linkage app in the airplane. This video shows the sidebar populated with a few test properties for the properties panel and populated with a list of all elements in the elements panel. I'm copying the look and feel of Xcode, the Apple development IDE, for the sidebar.
The properties don't do anything yet. I'm working on a reusable set of classes for the items in this panel and that's what the first text field is built from. The other three fields are built differently and will get converted to my more versatile framework later.
My intention is to show all of the properties that apply to whatever is selected. I think that the only field that won't be available for multiple selections is the name field, but even that field might be ok at show for multiple selections since it's up to the user if they want all selections to have the same name. Unlike in the Windows app, each property will be applied the moment it is changed and the view of the mechanism will show that change. The only trick is going to be applying undo actions to the properties in a way that undoes the change to the mechanism, not just the change in the editor window.
I'm a few hundred line closer to completion on this project. Only 9 more months to go!