Macbook Pro Touch Bar Support

With the announcement of MacBook Pro 13/15 with Touch Bar, I sure hope that Xojo will supply support. Alternatively, a third party library would do. Thanks guys!

Already sorted in the MBS plugins.

See https://www.mbsplugins.de/archive/2016-11-24/Videos_for_TouchBar_and_MBS_Pl

Personally I’d rather see Xojo expend their resources on the current crop of bug requests, than supporting what (my opinion) amounts to a “gimmick”

Why not both?

Depends on which camp you are in. Do you want

(a) new features as fast as possible

(b) a stable production platform

(c) a trade-off between the two

In my opinion with the emphasis on Rapid Release Xojo has become a perpetual beta software, with some releases unusable (and people recommending to use older versions until the most egregious errors have been fixed) and other releases only suited for certain projects but not others.

FOR ME there are simply too many bugs.

I’m not saying the Xojo guys don’t work hard or Xojo is unusable - I’m saying the priorities are wrong and the quality has suffered (same for Apple after going from an 18 month to a 12 month OS release cycle).

And if I see one more meaningless note about how many dozens or hundreds of bugs have been fixed without the accompanying note on how many new bugs have been found then I’m going to scream because then I just feel like someone is trying to deceive me.

I think more urgent than built in TouchBar support is the printing on Windows which broke in 2016r4.

Never mind

This is my last post

Wow. All I was asking if there was Touch Bar support for macOS. Not to open up a can of worms if (A) Touch Bar is a gimmick or (B) there are way too many quality bugs. Regarding the latter and from my experience, when I download a Xojo update, the first thing I do is rip through a conditional (private) version of my app that unit tests all of my modules.
And with each update I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that my app passes with flying colors on both Windows and OS X. So, overall, there must be an insane amount of testing by Xojo before releases and I appreciate if and when an issue does come up that is stopping us from releasing, their crew jumps on it. I would also agree that #1 priority must be quality.

Hi Howard,

Sorry this drifted into the limited-programmers, limited-options discussion that crops up so often.

To your query, since Apple’s never truly forth-coming with new technologies like this except to specific developers who will be able to “Demonstrate” them at launch, it’s sometimes tough for other tools to keep up. We have similar issues in the worlds of Java and Python.

For now, Christian’s MBS plugins provide the tools necessary to code the touch bar in your app in “Xojo-style”. Or, you could do what some do and look at the Apple APIs and create your own declares in Native Xojo code to use them as you would in Objective-C.

Thanks Tim. That is what I will do.
Ken

Technically a Xojo plugin could also offer Touch Bar for the IDE itself.
Like I could put there a Build button.
Or do you guys have ideas?

Adding it to the IDE via plugin IMO would not be a lot of help…

But if the Touch Bar becomes ubiquitous (on desktop keyboards as well as laptops). I would LOVE to have an IDE preference to ONLY show the ToolBar of the active Xojo window on the TouchBar… and save valuable screen real-estate without losing the toolbar altogther!!!

This may not be what Apple had in mind (§or want), but I love the idea to save (vertically) valuable screen real-estate.

My dock in always hidden (and shows on purpose, when the mouse goes screen bottom) because of that. And since I do not need it 60/60, 7/7, etc… I am happy.

[quote=305927:@Norman Palardy]Never mind

This is my last post[/quote]
Broken keyboard?

[quote=305972:@Christian Schmitz]Technically a Xojo plugin could also offer Touch Bar for the IDE itself.
Like I could put there a Build button.
Or do you guys have ideas?[/quote]

The old quick ways:

Add property
Add method
Add constant
…

would be nice to have back in the IDE, even on the TouchBar

BTW If the Touch Bar ever comes to desktop keyboards (even if just a “pro” keyboard) I would hope that it would:

  1. be in addition to the normal function Keys (space less critical than on a laptop)
  2. be on a keyboard what as otherwise be a standard layout with a numeric keypad (Which means it could be longer)
  3. be a wired keyboard (so I don’t have to worry about batteries, and since it would be expensive, I would not have to replace it when it’s sealed battery no longer holds a charge long enough)

But if Apple does do a desktop TouchBar keyboard, I suspect none of those 3 things would happen… Oh well

  • Karen

[quote=306067:@Karen Atkocius]be in addition to the normal function Keys (space less critical than on a laptop)
be on a keyboard what as otherwise be a standard layout with a numeric keypad (Which means it could be longer)
be a wired keyboard (so I don’t have to worry about batteries, and since it would be expensive, I would not have to replace it when it’s sealed battery no longer holds a charge long enough)[/quote]
Agreed on all accounts…

[quote=306067:@Karen Atkocius]BTW If the Touch Bar ever comes to desktop keyboards (even if just a “pro” keyboard) I would hope that it would:

  1. be in addition to the normal function Keys (space less critical than on a laptop) [/quote]

Seems redundand and contrary to the spirit of a context dependend touch bar.

Well, Touchbar should be context sensitive, offer the button you need now and not be redundant to buttons already on screen.

For example if you have text selected in the code editor, the commands to comment it out or extract to new method would be a good idea.

New Property/Method is something you don’t call that often.

Actually I do. During setting up a new project and creating new objects I keep swearing at Xojo for removing the buttons from the toolbar.