After playing around with Shade for a while, I realised that it would be great to have a way to actually use the parameter window Codea has in an app. I’m aware of the fact that it is meant to be used for prototyping, however in “real” apps it could also prove to be rather useful if there was some additional functionality. Here are some suggestions:
- Choose whether to show output window or not / select height of output window
- Option to choose a number in a way similar to how parameter.text works (like in Shade)
- Change width/height of slider
- Choose colours for slider, text, etc.
- Lists (e.g. in Shade you can select from a variety of models to use when using “Prop”)
- Multiple buttons/… next to each other (e.g. in Shade you have x and y values next to each other)
- Change width, colour, opacity of the parameter window
- Optional Swipe gesture to open parameter window
- Maybe there could be an option to have the parameter on the right side or both instead of just left
- When using parameter.clear there is a short delay until the new parameters are shown. Maybe have the option to show the new parameters immediately.
So in general it would be useful to have more control over the appearance of the parameter window and the additional functionality Shade uses. Using parameters is simply the easiest way to add a graphical user interface in Codea and although it is meant for prototyping I think it could actually become rather powerful (or at least make prototyping much more convenient).
@Simeon Thanks for the info! Definitely looks promising, especially the Universal release
Just one last question: Codea was exposed to the file system of iOS some time ago. Any chance that Apps written in Codea might get access to the file system as well?
@Leon Codea doesn’t actually get access to the file system. It can only access its own local documents and those documents it has explicitly created.
The only way for Codea to access outside of its sandbox is if a user directly attempts to open a Codea project from the Files app from outside of Codea’s directory. iOS takes this as permission for Codea to “see” the file and at that point we can read it.
The other way is to present the user with a document picker and allow them to select a file for reading.
@Simeon Sorry, I guess what I wrote didn’t really make sense.
What I meant to ask was, whether it is possible for Codea-made apps to show certain files and/or their dedicated folders in the files app similar to Codea. This could be pretty useful to import photos etc.
Or is it entirely possible to add this to a Codea-project in Xcode?
It is certainly not a feature a lot of people need, but especially for apps it could be quite interesting.
@Leon A standalone Codea generated app should be able to access the Documents directory via “Documents:” assets. You can also make addons and they can do anything that a regular app can as long as you create Lua bindings to support it.
