Nib or xib file support?

[programmingkidx]

Thank you very much for starting this port of AppKit for the classic Mac OS. This is something the open source community should have done years ago.

I was wondering if nib and xib file support is planned?

[uliwitness]

Sadly, I haven't figured out how to implement NSClassFromString() for the Metrowerks compiler, so instantiating classes based on a class name in a XIB file is impossible without extra code that populates a string -> class lookup table. There's also no NIB/XIB editor for classic MacOS, and no built-in XML parser. So if I look more into UI serialization, I'd likely rather write code that takes DLOG/DITL resources that you can edit using ResEdit and uses those to create NSWindow and NSView instances from it.

[iMacker2020]

Using DLOG/DITL to create NSWindows is a very interesting idea 👍.

There is a project that implements OpenStep called GNUStep: https://gnustep.github.io
I wonder now if it could be ported to Mac OS 9. It does come with an Interface Builder-like program called GORM.

[uliwitness]

GORM would need an AppKit to run on top of on MacOS 9. Would probably still require the XML parser too. GNUstep itself assumes it's running on a Linux, so I doubt much of it would be left to port over. They also probably expect a much more modern Objective-C compiler than what CodeWarrior has, and a fully functioning ObjC runtime.

So I think this project is likely the closest you'll get, unless you want to port clang to MacOS 9.