(Crud -- Forgot to change the title again. Sorry about that. -- GA)
IMHO, you are trying to do this the hard way. I did one similar to
that, using views, many years ago using MacApp. (Presented it at MadaCon in
Phoenix.) I wouldn't do it that way again. Just draw everything in one
view. Define a draw-shape object with lists of inputs and outputs (could be
objects). Define the connecting lines however you want, as line-objects.
If you want connector objects, define them. You can easily establish a
recursive algorithm that ensures directionality and makes sure you don't
connect more than one output to any input. You an even do (as I did) cut
and paste which preserves inter-object connections.
If you are not familiar with drawing code, spend some time with the
Sketch example. It has a lot of code you can pilfer. However, I would
suggest putting the code into controllers, not in the view and document like
Sketch does.
> Hi Everyone
>
> I've recently tried implementing a tool that functioned similar to Quartz
> Composer (the tool was for an entirely different purpose, and I did not know
> about Quartz Composer at the time). Basically, the user is presented with a
> canvas. On the canvas, the user can place squares that represent components,
> and these components can be linked together by dragging a line from one to
> another. While, I did get an implementation working, I felt it was quite a
> bit of hackery, and I'm wondering if anybody else has any experience with
> such a user interface? For me, the hard part was figuring out which view
> hierarchy the connecting lines belonged to. For example my view hierarchy
> was NSWindow --> Canvas --> Components. A connecting line from one
> component to another didn't seem to fit as a subview of any one component,
> because its bounds were not within that of any single component - they were
> between components. My solution was to create a clear CALayer for each
> line, and that layer was owned by the canvas, not any component. Whenever a
> component was moved on the screen, the appropriate lines needed to be
> updated as well. My solution seemed, to me, to have far to many layers and
> weak references.
>
> There are many applications like this: OmniGraffle, Keynote (to some
> extent), OpenOffice, Reason, etc. Is this type of interface so common that
> there are known "tricks" to solving the problem easier (I'm thinking
> something analogous to a design pattern). Thanks a lot.
>
>
>
> --
> Darren Minifie
> Computer Science Masters Candidate
> University of Victoria, BC. Canada
> My Rants: www.noisyair.com
> My Band: www.ohsnapmusic.com
>
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