[NTLK] Minor tweaks to iEinstein UI

Jake Bordens jake at allaboutjake.com
Thu Nov 20 20:31:47 EST 2014


Hi Everyone. 

I have been playing with Einstein for a few days, and I wanted to post 
some of the updates I've made for consideration.

Specific changes:

- Build files for XCode6 with the target iOS version set for iOS8.
- Updated to use Storyboards instead of XIBs for the interface, with a 
little tweaking to the view hierarchy.  (This makes some additional 
chrome, popovers, menus, easier in the future)
- Fix for rotation.  You still have to manually tell NewtonOS to rotate, 
but it then scales appropriately.  You can then rotate your iOS device to 
match, and it will re-scale to fill the screen.
- A few new screen resolutions in the settings for iPhone 5/6/6+
- A splash screen (just a black screen that says 'Einstein' but is needed 
to tell iOS that the new iPhone 6 resolutions are supported)

Sadly, nothing to the actual emulator.  I'm not versed enough in the low 
level details of the Newton hardware and software to make any inroads 
there.  I really look forward to the day that new simulation techniques 
improve the performance to more usable levels (or iOS hardware 
single-threaded performance advances to the point where the emulation is 
fast enough!)

You can find the changes in GitHub: 
	https://github.com/jake-b/Einstein

The XCode6 file has a new target called "iEinstein (Storyboards)" that 
will build all the new changes.  I tried to use #ifdefs around the 
storyboard code  so it should still build with the old XIBs using the 
other target.

These changes came out of some tests I was doing with the Adonit Jot 
Script stylus.  The Jot is a fine-tipped capacitive stylus with bluetooth 
that has palm rejection.  I got mixed results.  It did work, but I think 
the emulator was taking up too much of the processor on my iPad 3, and 
hence it was dropping strokes and such.

If anyone has any feedback, let me know.

Anyhow, your mileage may vary. Enjoy.

Jake
(formerly Jake from the Newton Underground, aka Jake the author of NUDrop 
and NewtonIM)


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