[HN Gopher] Godot on iPad, Toolbars, Importers, Embedding, Debugger
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Godot on iPad, Toolbars, Importers, Embedding, Debugger
        
       Author : rcarmo
       Score  : 151 points
       Date   : 2024-09-01 07:50 UTC (15 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.la-terminal.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.la-terminal.net)
        
       | Ecco wrote:
       | Very interesting, but I can't help but wonder: are developers
       | really interested in working on an iPad? I feel like this is
       | exactly the kind of job where a laptop is more efficient, for a
       | couple reasons: 1/ Physical keyboard 2/ Over extended periods of
       | time, even though more intuitive, touchscreen feels more
       | exhausting to use than touchpad because you can't easily rest
       | your hands.
       | 
       | And if the targeted usage is "iPad with a keyboard on a desk"
       | well, at this point it's mostly a laptop anyway so as a developer
       | why even bother getting a tablet in the first place?
        
         | Closi wrote:
         | The use-case I can probably see more is schools.
         | 
         | Lots of schools give all their students ipads.
         | 
         | Also lots of kids have iPads but not laptops (my girlfriend's
         | daughter does not have a laptop that could do Godot
         | development, but has an iPad).
         | 
         | My assumption is it's more about introducing people to
         | development than professional developers moving to iPad.
        
         | TeaDude wrote:
         | Kids, I'd suspect. More and more of them are stuck exclusively
         | on tablets.
         | 
         | From what I can tell, there isn't even a version of Roblox
         | Studio available. Scratch seems to work though.
        
           | pcdoodle wrote:
           | That's a shame. Having a "project" is what kicks off learning
           | the cool bits about computers. If you can't do it with the
           | devices we're giving kids, we are robbing our future
           | inventors.
        
             | al_borland wrote:
             | We're also making less capable employees.
             | 
             | I've noticed most of the people we hire these days for dev
             | roles have no idea how computers or operating systems work.
             | I'll have someone with a pretty impressive title reach out
             | to me with a basic OS question, and I wonder how they got
             | to where they are without this foundational knowledge. Most
             | of this stuff I learned on my own when I got my first
             | computer.
        
               | baq wrote:
               | There are people here on this forum openly admitting they
               | don't see how 'knowing Linux' is useful, so no point
               | actually learning it.
               | 
               | I have no idea if they really never learn and wing it
               | until they become managers or become great cloud
               | engineers who simply scale up instead of running strace.
        
               | al_borland wrote:
               | I don't know how someone uses modern dev tools without
               | understanding some very basics of the Linux CLI. I see
               | this all the time. If a command in some documentation
               | isn't a straight copy/paste, they're done for.
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | Knowing Linux is different than knowing how to use a CLI.
               | 
               | I dislike that the two are conflated.
               | 
               | Firstly, Mac and Windows both offer a very mature command
               | line interface.
               | 
               | But also, I don't think knowing Linux should require you
               | to know the command line either. If other operating
               | systems don't require it, neither should Linux.
               | 
               | If you're focusing on "developer tools", even then, what
               | tools do most devs need that can't be done from a UI? I
               | live a lot of my time in the terminal but there's very
               | little that can't actually be wrapped in a UI
        
               | skeeter2020 wrote:
               | all your points are valid, and you don't "need" the
               | knowledge but it sure feels like the UI can get in the
               | way of some things, mislead your formation of a mental
               | model, or reduce the clarity & density of information. I
               | find most source control tools with mouse-driven UIs like
               | this.
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | I think CLI tools can help compartmentalise functionality
               | and that can be helpful.
               | 
               | But I think they can also obscure functionality the same
               | way as a GUI tool.
               | 
               | Take git for example, it's much easier to visualize how
               | it works from a GUI. Squashing is also faster in a GUI.
               | But some other operations are clearer when you're giving
               | every flag yourself.
               | 
               | Ultimately I think it comes down to the UX of something
               | regardless of the form of UI it's presented in.
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | Let me flip that around on you: why would someone need to
               | know Linux specifically for the majority of jobs out
               | there?
               | 
               | I'm very familiar with Linux. My day job for years was
               | Linux based and I honestly do not think one needs to know
               | it, or any other OS specifically , unless your job
               | specifically requires it.
        
               | ninkendo wrote:
               | Your question is a trap because you're not qualifying
               | what type of job you're talking about. I could say
               | "because your code runs on Linux and you should learn it"
               | and then you'll just say "well I wasn't talking about
               | jobs writing code running on Linux".
               | 
               | Assuming the discussion is about a typical developer that
               | runs code that is deployed to "the cloud", and the cloud
               | is basically 99% Linux, yes. You absolutely need to know
               | enough about how Linux actually works to be effective at
               | your job. Otherwise you'll fall into the sort of trap
               | zillions of "big data" engineers fall into, where you
               | spend countless hours writing custom code that takes up
               | terabytes of RAM that could have been a simple
               | sed/awk/grep pipeline that uses a handful of kilobytes.
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | Surely, if my question is a trap then so is the initial
               | premise I'm replying to?
               | 
               | It doesn't specify a job and that's exactly what I'm
               | calling out.
               | 
               | Even your response assumes that a "typical" developer is
               | one who deploys to the cloud , but what is that based off
               | of? And how many of those need to interact with the cloud
               | infrastructure itself?
               | 
               | Your second point about taking up terabytes of RAM
               | doesn't really matter if it's on the cloud or not, and
               | certainly doesn't matter if it's Linux . It's also
               | assuming that you can't have a UI frontend that just
               | calls the necessary efficient code or CLI commands behind
               | the hood.
               | 
               | So my question remains: what percentage of jobs actually
               | require you to know Linux specifically?
        
               | ninkendo wrote:
               | I guess I sprung the trap.
               | 
               | We can apply the principle of charity and assume that
               | because OP was making this complaint at all, it was
               | probably in the context of jobs where ostensibly there
               | _is_ plenty of value in learning Linux. You don't need to
               | ask for qualification here, it's just assumed by context
               | that, for OP's point, these were probable roles that
               | really should have Linux knowledge.
               | 
               | But you turn that around and say "but why would you need
               | Linux knowledge??!", taking the least-charitably-possible
               | interpretation of OP's comment, _as if they're talking
               | about janitors or something_ , challenging them to prove
               | why _the majority of jobs_ (!!??!!??) needs Linux
               | knowledge.
               | 
               | I dunno man, maybe because in their head they're
               | referring to a category of people for whom working Linux
               | knowledge really should be expected, and it's assumed
               | that readers of their comment will probably understand
               | that, and that they're not going to be prompted to
               | qualify every last thing they say.
               | 
               | But sure. Yeah. Linux technically refers only to a Kernel
               | and not the whole OS so people shouldn't say "learning
               | Linux" if they only mean a CLI and a basic unix-like
               | environment. You're very smart, thank god you're here to
               | clarify all of this for us.
               | 
               | I need to stop with HN for a while, the level of pedantry
               | has gotten absolutely out of control and I'm getting
               | angry just reading this shit.
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | Oh come off your high horse.
               | 
               | The phrasing is exactly
               | 
               | > There are people here on this forum openly admitting
               | they don't see how 'knowing Linux' is useful
               | 
               | That could literally apply to any job, especially as a
               | developer.
               | 
               | And then the rest of your inane rant is about something I
               | didn't say. I didn't say anything about linux being
               | limited to the CLI, in fact my other comments say Linux
               | is much more than the CLI.m. So now you're just inventing
               | your own argument to be angry about.
               | 
               | So maybe take your own advice, and give a charitable
               | reading instead of getting angry because you're unable to
               | make a point. Because not only did you take the least
               | charitable version of what I said, you invented arguments
               | I didn't make.
               | 
               | And maybe you should take a break from the internet if
               | things make you this angry this easily.
        
               | ninkendo wrote:
               | [delayed]
        
               | baq wrote:
               | Yes, I wasn't specific enough: it comes from developers.
               | I can see how frontend devs don't want to 'learn Linux'
               | but not wanting to learn how to configure an HTTP server
               | because 'this is Linux' is at the very least poor taste.
               | 
               | Now, talking about people who actually deploy code to
               | backends... these are the folks I had in mind. I imagine
               | most of them don't deploy to Windows Server and they sure
               | aren't deploying to any macos backends.
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | I think you're arguing backwards from the assumption that
               | people aren't learning those skills because it's Linux
               | versus the actual learning of the skill itself.
               | 
               | Why would a frontend dev need to know how to configure a
               | http server beyond what node or wamp/lamp gives them?
               | 
               | The number of full stack people is very low compared to
               | dedicated backend and frontend folks. People focus on the
               | needs of their job, and if their job doesn't require
               | wearing both hats they usually don't go out of their way
               | to do it.
               | 
               | Even at many companies that deploy things to the cloud,
               | they'll have dedicated folks for that because the people
               | writing the code to run are busy writing the code.
               | 
               | That it eventually runs on Linux is not very meaningful
               | to most devs unless their app needs special compiling
               | configurations or libraries.
        
               | baq wrote:
               | Re frontend devs not knowing how to configure an HTTP
               | server: it's literally the front end. Caching, cors,
               | cookies, maximum request sizes, these are all things
               | frontend devs should know to work effectively as a team
               | with the backend folks, but the backend folks gladly help
               | out, usually. I'm not even saying they should know basics
               | of DNS even if I think they should if they want their
               | work load into their customer's browsers quickly. I can
               | accept the browser is the OS and whatever happens outside
               | of it is dark magic, like I said it is just poor taste.
               | 
               | > Even at many companies that deploy things to the cloud,
               | they'll have dedicated folks for that because the people
               | writing the code to run are busy writing the code.
               | 
               | And this is the root of the problem. A week's worth of
               | coding sure saves them a day of configuring their host
               | systems, not to mention optimizing their cloud spend up.
               | The folks who actually know how the system works and how
               | to diagnose when it doesn't are in short supply and are
               | also effin busy.
               | 
               | > That it eventually runs on Linux is not very meaningful
               | to most devs unless their app needs special compiling
               | configurations or libraries.
               | 
               | This is true only until it isn't. There can be times of
               | coasting and then the dreaded base image version bump
               | comes and 90% of the organization has no clue if they're
               | impacted or how to check if they are.
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | But most frontend devs don't need to do any of the things
               | you've mentioned. By your own comment, they have a
               | backend team who handle it and they work in concert.
               | Would it be nice if they could understand each other
               | better? Sure but most backend folks aren't picking up
               | JavaScript and UI frameworks either , or learning about
               | browser tech.
               | 
               | And all the stuff you mentioned can be done by learning
               | those skills on windows or Mac. Linux doesn't really need
               | to factor in, and now you're saying to learn an entirely
               | new operating system in addition to a new skillset.
               | 
               | You're trying to say they should be more than what they
               | are, but for a scenario they can't predict coming up? In
               | which case any number of other things might happen too,
               | and there is likely already a team of people better
               | suited to handle those issues. What would the sales pitch
               | be to have someone learn it?
               | 
               | I think there's an impedance mismatch between what you
               | expect to provide value to someone as a hypothetical
               | future goal and what they actually need to achieve their
               | objectives.
        
               | baq wrote:
               | The sales pitch is the difference between being a
               | programmer and an engineer: one writes code, the other
               | solves business problems. The value delivered by good
               | engineering may be less than a lucky coder who doesn't
               | have time to learn the tools of the trade, but this is
               | expected: engineering is making sure luck doesn't matter
               | for the business, within the operational envelope and in
               | the assigned budget.
               | 
               | Linux is important if that's what the backend deploys to.
               | If it is, it's a part of the operational envelope - I am
               | saying engineers should have familiarity with what
               | production is running on. I don't particularly care where
               | those skills are being picked up as long as you know that
               | on the production box there's strace instead of dtruss
               | and you know how to check what the D state process is
               | waiting for or whatever interesting issue arises which
               | only happens under load, with networked storage and with
               | at least a couple dozen cpus. (This is also why I don't
               | care for frontend devs to 'know Linux', but having some
               | knowledge about HTTP and their production HTTP servers
               | would be beneficial, as would be knowing that networks
               | aren't magic...)
        
         | codetrotter wrote:
         | The way that it appeals to me is the idea that instead of
         | having two devices (laptop and iPad), you'd only have the iPad.
         | Saves money.
         | 
         | Unfortunately, like you point out, the iPad is not actually
         | usable as a laptop replacement, sadly.
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | Definitely, specially because tablets with keyboard, pen
         | writing recognition, killed what was left from the netbooks
         | market.
        
           | badsectoracula wrote:
           | And then oversized phones killed tablets, bringing us the
           | worst of both worlds :-P
           | 
           | I was looking into tablets recently and there is a dearth of
           | options - a quick search in a local eshop aggregator has ~20
           | 2024 tablets after i filter out the sucky specs and ~72 2024
           | laptops (including some larger ones), again after filtering
           | the sucky specs. Meanwhile there are ~276 2024 phones after
           | sucky spec filtering and that is with greater specs than the
           | tablet ones (because the aggregator had no filters matching
           | the tablet specs - even the minimum specs in phones were
           | higher than the high specs in tablets).
           | 
           | All these give me the impression that we're long past the
           | hype days of tablets.
        
             | WillAdams wrote:
             | Have you considered:
             | 
             | https://www.lincplustech.com/products/lincstudio-s1-drawing
             | -...
             | 
             | (if I hadn't panicked and bought a spare Samsung Galaxy
             | Book 3 Pro 360, I'd be trying one)
        
             | pjmlp wrote:
             | I see iPads, Huawei, Surfaces, and Samsung tablets all over
             | the place in the European coffees, trains and planes.
        
           | WillAdams wrote:
           | When I wanted a replacement for my Samsung Galaxy Book 12 (a
           | 12" tablet w/ a bundled folding keyboard case and included
           | S-Pen) I had to go up to a Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360
           | (since that was the only high-resolution device w/ an S-Pen
           | then available) and had to go shopping for a new bag to carry
           | it.
           | 
           | I do use it for development after a fashion (OpenSCAD,
           | https://pythonscad.org/ and sometimes
           | https://www.blockscad3d.com/editor/ or OpenSCAD Graph Editor,
           | usually using TeXWorks for Literate Programming), but also
           | for drawing/sketching and note-taking and annotating PDFs.
        
         | pennomi wrote:
         | iPad is also a brilliant drawing tablet. If Apple didn't
         | intentionally cripple it, it might be the best self-contained
         | mini gamedev studio available.
         | 
         | But you gotta sell MacBooks AND iPads, amirite?
        
           | al_borland wrote:
           | Even if we assume the best intentions, I think iOS and iPadOS
           | is still recovering from being crippled based on early design
           | decisions.
           | 
           | I remember at one of the Apple events Steve Jobs was saying
           | the one area of complexity that still hung people up was the
           | filesystem, so iOS (and as an extension, iPadOS) hid it away
           | from the user. Files were locked to apps. As the platform
           | evolved, people wanted/needed to operate in multiple apps
           | with one file, so this concept of duplicating files in
           | multiple apps came to be. This was a mess when it came to
           | file versioning. It was also very difficult and confusing,
           | and required apps to support it.
           | 
           | Eventually they added the Files app, but it is a very slow
           | road to change over from an app based system to a file based
           | system. Even today, it's a crap shoot and some apps work
           | better with the Files app than others, and it seems this
           | aspect is still much more confusing than macOS from this
           | perspective.
           | 
           | This was a huge miss that no one really talks about.
        
         | deergomoo wrote:
         | > this is exactly the kind of job where a laptop is more
         | efficient
         | 
         | You are correct, but I think efforts like this are an important
         | part of discovering how we can make the tablet form factor
         | useful for more types of productivity. Software design is an
         | evolutionary process, and I think professional tablet software
         | is still pretty stunted in that department. Largely down to
         | Apple's endless resistance against allowing the iPad to be used
         | as a computer rather than a media appliance.
         | 
         | The more stuff we get like this, the sooner we can collectively
         | work out how to work around the shortcomings (no guaranteed
         | keyboard, poor feature discoverability of touch-first UIs) and
         | lean into the positives (handheld, ultraportable, direct
         | manipulation).
         | 
         | It's crazy that we've had the iPad for 14 years and tablet
         | computers in general much longer than that but we seemingly
         | still haven't worked it out yet. It still feels like the only
         | options are scaled up phone software (iOS, Android) or desktop
         | software with a touch layer awkwardly bolted on (Windows).
        
           | skeeter2020 wrote:
           | >> It's crazy that we've had the iPad for 14 years and tablet
           | computers in general much longer than that but we seemingly
           | still haven't worked it out yet.
           | 
           | Maybe there's nothing to work out? At least for activities
           | like this
        
             | runevault wrote:
             | There may not be, but unless it is attempted seriously do
             | we actually know? Is the current local maxima near the
             | global one or are we a long ways off? I have no idea, but I
             | can't assume we are already there just because my
             | imagination can't come up with a better solution.
        
           | mihaaly wrote:
           | For me getting the task done - produce something valuable -
           | would be more important than trying to validate the
           | usefuleness of some hardware for some edge case that seen
           | unimportant by the vendor (and probably for enough of
           | reasons, considering the inherent and listed above
           | limitations not too vendor specific). When there is a
           | suitable device for that use already, for long.
           | 
           | Good game though for fun.
        
         | janice1999 wrote:
         | I'm doing Godot tutorials on a Steam Deck with a wireless mouse
         | and keyboard. I can't imagine using the touch screen.
        
         | ako wrote:
         | > at this point it's mostly a laptop.
         | 
         | Exactly, it's mostly a laptop, so it's my main driver when at
         | home. No inconvenient keyboard in the way when consuming media
         | on the couch, but very productive when coupled with a
         | (mechanical) keyboard, mouse and external display. Getting my
         | ipad is no bother, getting my laptop is.
        
         | sandoze wrote:
         | I'm always confused by these comments.
         | 
         | iPad Pros have a very capable (and expensive) keyboard which
         | doubles as a great stand. BLE keyboards and mice can be paired
         | with an iPad. Wired keyboards also work.
        
           | stackghost wrote:
           | See the second paragraph of the comment to which you replied:
           | 
           | If you're going to use the iPad with a keyboard, why not just
           | use a laptop?
           | 
           | I suppose the use case here is iOS game developers who don't
           | want to use their MacBooks, but iPad+keyboard doesn't seem
           | like a fun way to write complex software to me.
        
           | rxyz wrote:
           | To add: I found the M4 iPad Pro keyboard to be a better
           | typing experience than my MacBook Pro keyboard or the
           | standalone Magic Keyboard
        
           | al_borland wrote:
           | I often see my dad use his iPad in keyboard/mouse mode. At
           | this point I question the point of the iPad. It seems like
           | the user is seeking to interact with it like a laptop, yet
           | the OS is far more compromised than macOS. Window management
           | isn't as flexible, all apps need to come from the App Store,
           | things that power users would generally want (like Terminal)
           | aren't there for the native OS, Files is less capable than
           | Finder, and the entire OS is build around apps rather than
           | files, which makes working on a file across multiple
           | applications more difficult.
           | 
           | I think my tech life would be more simple if I could use an
           | iPad as my computer, but I can't see a path there. I'd have
           | to give up too much.
        
             | neilalexander wrote:
             | If you're looking at this from the perspective of a power
             | user, then sure. For everyone else, the iPad makes a robust
             | computing device that simply does not have a lot of
             | complexity that we power users have just learned to accept.
             | Try explaining the concept of "files" or "terminals" to a
             | random person on the street.
        
               | al_borland wrote:
               | Considering files have been at the center of how
               | operating systems work since the beginning, and computers
               | have been used in school and businesses for 30 years now,
               | I find it disappointing that people are still confused by
               | files.
               | 
               | When people were confused by the keyboard, Jobs said that
               | death would take care of that. When it came to files, he
               | saw that as a problem that needed to be solved in the
               | system, but I think it is more confusing on the iPad than
               | macOS.
               | 
               | People have had to use files, moving them to floppy
               | disks, burning them to CDs, copying them to flash drives,
               | and now dealing with them with services like Dropbox. I
               | would think files and folders in a home directory would
               | be something people understand now. I think the modern
               | smartphone and tablets made a lot of people regress, and
               | the youngest simply aren't learning it. The less it's
               | used directly, the abstract the idea becomes, and that
               | makes systems harder to use, because at the need of the
               | day it's still files and folder. Avoiding that has so far
               | created confusing layers of abstraction that haven't
               | worked so well.
        
               | neilalexander wrote:
               | It's easy to say that files should be easy to understand
               | by now but for a lot of people who aren't necessarily
               | computer natives, there is a non-trivial learning curve
               | as to what a "file" conceptually is: something that's on
               | a storage device, that's in a specific part of some
               | abstract folder tree, that is required to have a name,
               | that has a type that may or may not in the name (file
               | extensions), that has a format that some programs
               | understand and others don't, that has an associated
               | program or programs that know how to open it, that can be
               | copied and that copies are in no way connected to the
               | original that may be found in different locations to the
               | original, etc.
               | 
               | Contrast that to how iOS just generally leaves
               | applications to "own" their own data and present them
               | however makes most sense, with only a few exceptions (the
               | most notable being the Photos app, which sorts and
               | displays photos by things that make sense for photos).
               | The place where you'll find the thing you were working on
               | is actually just in the app where you were working on it,
               | which is, unsurprisingly, far easier to explain. Plenty
               | of people get on perfectly fine without knowing or caring
               | about "files" and are not really worse off for it.
        
               | talldayo wrote:
               | Okay, I'm going to take a hard disagree on this point.
               | Apple's "abstraction" for viewing files is really not
               | that deep. If you open the Photos app, you are looking at
               | a bunch of files. Garageband showing it's saves, iMovie
               | showing it's projects, iCloud showing it's folders, none
               | of it is a particularly "simplified" view of things. At
               | best, it's rehashing the MIME type filtering mechanism
               | most mainstream OSes have used since the 90s. You
               | _really_ cannot argue that iOS is some different breed of
               | computer when ultimately it 's just creating a custom
               | wrapper around things people readily understand.
        
               | neilalexander wrote:
               | I didn't say that iOS is some different breed of
               | computer, I said that it doesn't present a lot of the
               | complexity. Of course it's all files underneath but the
               | point is that they are usually presented in a way that
               | doesn't leave the user thinking of them as "files" as an
               | abstract concept. People browsing through the Photos app
               | aren't really thinking about file names, whether it's a
               | JPEG or some other format, what folders they're in etc.
               | The "abstraction" doesn't need to be deep to be
               | effective.
        
               | harperlee wrote:
               | I have a hard time accepting that some of those are what
               | trips people. That a something called "file" is in one
               | place (device or particular location) seems more readily
               | understandable than an ethereal thing that's (sometimes,
               | to some degree, at some resolution) ubiquitous.
               | 
               | The format topic is also something that I see causing
               | frustration, but it is not complicated to understand, as
               | long as someone is familiar with the concept of
               | incompatibility (screwdrivers, human languages, etc.)
               | 
               | In my opinion at this day and age is more an issue of
               | "never needed to learn / cared to" than that of "it is
               | difficult to learn".
        
               | deergomoo wrote:
               | > When it came to files, he saw that as a problem that
               | needed to be solved in the system, but I think it is more
               | confusing on the iPad than macOS
               | 
               | I completely agree, and I think this is probably iOS'
               | single biggest design mistake. In trying to hide away
               | difficulties non-power users face managing a filesystem,
               | they've managed to make things both more confusing for
               | novice users and just plain annoying for power users.
               | 
               | I think the issue is that most computer users _do_
               | understand at least a little about filesystems. They
               | might lose things or accidentally delete or overwrite
               | things, but I think many many people are reasonably okay
               | with the concept  "my things are in files, my files are
               | in a folder".
               | 
               | But the app-centric model iOS uses becomes unnecessarily
               | difficult when you need to do anything with a file that
               | extends beyond viewing it in the software that created
               | it. Emailing or copying a file is an incredibly common
               | thing to need to do, yet some of the most technophobic
               | people I know can manage it just fine on a PC because the
               | process is the same for any and every file. The hardest
               | part for them is usually just remembering where they put
               | it.
               | 
               | That one problem _is_ solved by an app-centric file
               | model, but introduces a much bigger problem in that the
               | mechanism to share or copy a file is different for every
               | app! It might be under an  "export" option, or it might
               | be under a little abstract picture of a square with an
               | upwards pointing arrow--because of course, everyone
               | universally understands that square-with-upwards-arrow is
               | how you email this to Steve in accounts...
               | 
               | (Yes the share icon is fairly standard across iOS apps,
               | but it could be and is located all over the place, and
               | I'm not convinced it's intuitive that step one of
               | "emailing a document" is "open Word").
        
               | bookofjoe wrote:
               | I have NO idea what a home directory is.
        
             | sandoze wrote:
             | I program for a career and I'm not going to argue that iPad
             | is going to be my go to device, until there's a 'killer'
             | app. But that's my day job. When I want to play around with
             | a hobby (writing, music, game dev using Godot???) I turn to
             | an iPad because it's NOT a computer. Maybe in the same way
             | a lot of music hobbyists buy gear to make music even though
             | using a computer DAW is far easier - we want to 'unplug'.
        
               | kejaed wrote:
               | Same here. I used to have Linux on my iPod and Xbox,
               | MythTV running on a server and Fujitsu netbook. Now
               | between the hockey rinks and soccer fields, I take out my
               | iPad Pro for HN, light photo editing and Netflix if I'm
               | lucky enough to find an hour of down time. There's enough
               | Linux, QNX, Windows, FreeRTOS, Azure, etc etc all day at
               | work now.
        
               | pjmlp wrote:
               | That is how eventually I settled back on Windows 7 with
               | Virtual Box/VMWare, nowadays WSL, and a bunch of Android
               | and WebOS devices.
        
           | deergomoo wrote:
           | That's a very nice combination if you have a relatively
           | static setup for the keyboard and mouse, where you can drop
           | the iPad in and out of it like a dock and take advantage of
           | the modularity.
           | 
           | However--at least in my own experience--if you're carrying
           | the keyboard/mouse/trackpad around with the iPad all the
           | time, I found it robs the device of what makes it compelling
           | to begin with (being ultraportable and handheld).
           | 
           | For a stint I was using an iPad Pro with the
           | keyboard/trackpad case, and it made it a far worse tablet.
           | The case almost doubled the total weight and thickness, which
           | made _using_ it much more like to a laptop, but it isn 't
           | nearly as capable as my MacBook (nor is it any cheaper).
           | 
           | More power to you if that setup works for you, but I came to
           | the conclusion that I'd just assembled myself a second, worse
           | laptop (which I think was OP's overall point).
        
         | dagmx wrote:
         | There's two parts to this.
         | 
         | 1. By porting the frontend to SwiftUi, they're actually making
         | it more native for all Apple platforms. He hints at it, but
         | this is a great first step to having Godot native on visionOS
         | where they can iterate on their games natively in device.
         | 
         | 2. A lot of creators (not necessarily developers) have switched
         | to the iPad as a primary creation device. Perhaps not a
         | majority by any means, but a sizeable amount.
         | 
         | Concept artists are on iPad. Recently the character designer
         | for Blue Eye Samurai did most of their work in Procreate.
         | 
         | 3D sculptors are picking it up as well with Nomad sculpt and I
         | think the soon to be released ZBrush for iPad (September 10th
         | apparently).
         | 
         | So if you're on the more visual side of things, and you've
         | already got your workflow on iPad, this lets you continue that
         | workflow.
        
           | nightowl_games wrote:
           | His fork will likely become out of date with upstream pretty
           | quickly once he stops working on it, id imagine.
        
             | dagmx wrote:
             | What does that have to do with what you're replying to?
        
           | __loam wrote:
           | Was going to say the same thing. A lot of artists use iPad
           | pros as their most important and only device now.
        
         | napkin wrote:
         | I primarily use an iPad pro. Hardware-wise, I think it's a
         | superior paradigm. Most of the time I'm using it with the magic
         | keyboard. I love that if the keyboard is damaged, it's totally
         | removed from the device.
         | 
         | We don't need to talk about the OS!
        
       | peppertree wrote:
       | Is this an open source project? I would like to try this,
       | especially after reading about all the little ux touches, but I
       | wasn't able to find any links.
        
         | MrJagil wrote:
         | You can find their slack at the bottom here
         | https://github.com/migueldeicaza/SwiftGodot
        
       | dagmx wrote:
       | This is a pretty fantastic breakdown of UX and UI design, both
       | for porting to SwiftUI but also to smaller screens.
       | 
       | There's obviously room for polish left but this looks so well
       | thought out already.
       | 
       | I am interested in how this might find its way back to Godot
       | proper. Would the team be willing to maintain not only one more
       | target but also an entirely different UI frontend?
       | 
       | I am also curious if this could become the native macOS frontend.
       | Even if that's behind a compile time flag, that's a very powerful
       | option for accessibility.
       | 
       | Lastly, GPL incompatibility aside, I wonder if this could inspire
       | a similar effort for Blender. Blender on iPad would be an amazing
       | value addition.
        
         | nightowl_games wrote:
         | Almost definitely no to both your questions. Godot doesnt have
         | enough developer resources to work on this, and this repo's
         | value is truly marginal. I really don't see the use case. I
         | think this guy is just having fun.
        
       | mannyv wrote:
       | As many people have pointed out, an iPad is not a big iphone.
       | Kudos for the developer for being open to learning design from
       | other apps.
       | 
       | And for caring about the UX.
        
       | nox101 wrote:
       | Has Apple changed it's rules on running code? A quick search
       | seems it's still not allowed
       | 
       | https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#2.5...
        
         | torginus wrote:
         | Not sure, but there are already game making apps on iPad:
         | 
         | https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gdevelop-game-maker/id16636757...
        
         | deergomoo wrote:
         | > Educational apps designed to teach, develop, or allow
         | students to test executable code may, in limited circumstances,
         | download code provided that such code is not used for other
         | purposes.
         | 
         | I believe this app would fall under this clause, much like apps
         | like Pythonista and of course Swift Playgrounds (not that Apple
         | even pretends to follow its own rules).
        
       | tofunth wrote:
       | Very interesting!
        
       | ncr100 wrote:
       | He talks about lack of discoverability of long press, like if you
       | long press on a feature you get a different result vs if you
       | short tap.
       | 
       | One way this could be addressed can be borrowed from video games:
       | animated pie charts, growing as you hold down the button,
       | activating the secondary function only after the pie completes a
       | full circle.
        
       | Razengan wrote:
       | Considering Epic's grudge against Apple, Apple should "bless"
       | Godot with some open source support and endorsement.
        
         | SquareWheel wrote:
         | I doubt they'd see it as a slight, considering Epic themselves
         | have helped fund Godot.
         | 
         | https://godotengine.org/article/godot-engine-was-awarded-epi...
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-09-01 23:00 UTC)