[HN Gopher] Show HN: Glyph3D - A 3D text visualizer for macOS an...
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Show HN: Glyph3D - A 3D text visualizer for macOS and iOS / iPadOS
Hello internet folks! I'm happy to share the first TestFlight
release of Glyph3D, a 3D text visualizer for macOS and iOS. It's
free, supports pretty much any utf8 data, and is a pretty
interesting way to navigate your repositories or data directories
without the limitations of standard text windows! Download and
bookmark for macOS and iOS:
https://github.com/tikimcfee/LookAtThat/ - You should be able to
download public repos from GitHub and render them. - Play with
opening and closing windows. I've disabled many of the in-flight
features to keep user confusion down, and will be creating
additional documentation about those features as they are
implemented. - Editing works but there's nowhere to put the data
for now ;) The user can pull from the app's caches if they want for
now, but there's no actual repo support - by design. Bringing in
the git SDK, or accessing the CLI, is a bit more work and danger
than I want to include in the app right now. Any feedback is
welcome, and if you'd like to support me or the project in any way,
please reach out to me, and I'll be looking forward to that
conversation.
Author : tikimcfee
Score : 44 points
Date : 2024-12-01 21:52 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| I could see this working really well with call flow graphs for
| reverse engineering or disassemblers like IDA or Ghidra see
| https://clearbluejar.github.io/assets/img/2023-01-22-callgra...
|
| Can this work with visionos?
| tikimcfee wrote:
| > call flow graphs
|
| Stay tuned! This is a planned future I had temporarily removed
| while I worked on performance in the Metal engine, and is
| coming back very soon =) I'd love the opportunity to pick your
| brain about potential intermediate formats as well - e.g., if
| you have specific languages or datasets that you'd want to be
| able to operate on. I have some ideas about adding a tiny
| runtime scripting layer in this as well to operate on text JIT,
| instead of just laying it out.
|
| > Can this work with visionos?
|
| Theoretically yes, but I haven't done the work to composite the
| two rendering layers together. Like a lot of Metal, there is a
| massive amount of documentation that would certainly be helpful
| if written, but currently isn't. I do plan on this, however, in
| the future.
| v1sea wrote:
| I built an interactive call graph interface targeting
| visionOS that I'll be open sourcing soon. My approach is to
| use the Language Server Protocol(LSP) as the itermediate
| format as many LSP implementations support the call hierarchy
| method. You can then proxy the commands to the headset for
| rendering. Using the LSP is nice because you can integrate
| the controls into small editor plugins and get live code
| analysis.
|
| Most code analysis programs fail in some combination of
| editor integration, language support, iteration speed, or
| interactivity.
|
| One of the big issues with visionOS right now is the divide
| between a full immersive space and a volume. There is a dev
| option to enable the virtual display to work in an immersive
| space, but normally a full metal rendered scene will hide
| your mac monitor. The volume requires RealityKit and provides
| no hand tracking data. My approach is to run the graph
| fruchterman-reingold spring embedder in a metal compute
| kernel updating a LowLevelMesh in a volume. The biggest limit
| I've faced is around 1000 input targets (graph nodes) is the
| most the RealitKyt renderer can support before the frame rate
| dips under 90Hz.
|
| Good luck if you attempt visionOS, it is nearly undocumented.
| tikimcfee wrote:
| Your implementation sounds great, and I'm looking forward
| to seeing it. Yes, the SDK is extremely obtuse and really
| not that easy to play with. I kinda was stubborn and
| refused to pick up the new rendering tool after just having
| learned SceneKit and then Metal, so I'm sure it's gotten at
| least a little easier, but the tools that Metal exposes
| just don't have analogues from what I can tell.
|
| Keep me on your short list for beta users when the time
| comes =)
| LoganDark wrote:
| This style of visualization reminds me of "VIRUS: The Game":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIgpWGVvfjA&list=PLi_KYBWS_E...
| tikimcfee wrote:
| Ha! You're kinda right and I like it. I guess thinking of
| literal files floating in space isn't a unique human experience
| eh? Good to know I've got someone like me out there at least =)
| LoganDark wrote:
| I've even done one better: this but in virtual reality :)
|
| I also don't identify human, so I suppose that isn't even a
| necessarily human experience either~
| tikimcfee wrote:
| Well then I have to say well done, haha. I had an old
| version in SceneKit / ARKit that worked in AR, but
| performance was limited based on my implementation and I
| could only get a few hundred files on screen on at once
| before you started losing too many frames.
|
| I wish you luck in your endeavors, and maybe one day we can
| chat about your experience, and what you've done =)
| LoganDark wrote:
| Any day! I love learning and sharing :)
|
| And I didn't make anything that automatically populates
| files in VR, but I did use a program (XSOverlay) that
| lets me use 2D desktop windows in VR, and I would open a
| crap ton of files at once and have them positioned all
| around me (along with the directory listings they came
| from).
| visekr wrote:
| This is really cool - I've had a halfbaked idea of a visual code
| editor for a while and this really solidifies my concept. if
| anyone wants to work together on it lmk : )
| tikimcfee wrote:
| Glad you think so! =)
|
| I'd love to chat with ya. Do you see my email? Feel free to
| email me! If not, reply here with whatever you'd prefer to chat
| with and I'll get back to you.
| visekr wrote:
| Sent!
| d-lisp wrote:
| I had the idea last year to create some kind of lsp/uml chimera
| that would render codebases in 3D so you could navigate them
| wearing a vr device. You would edit files from there, create
| files maybe classes, draw inheritance schemes, meet with other
| persons, explain stuff; and that would be a somewhat fun way of
| welcoming interns.
| tikimcfee wrote:
| This is exactly the use case I'm aiming for! I've done a lot of
| mentoring, a big part of getting familiar with a code base is
| building one's mental map for where things are in any kind of
| relationship to what things are doing. In upcoming versions,
| I'll be restoring the 'state sharing' control that lets
| multiple devices share their camera orientations and bookmakers
| between users in a local P2P state, and maybe eventually some
| remote server backed way.
| codetrotter wrote:
| It's a very specific kind of feedback but, your app seems to not
| be aware of the way that the top bar works on for example iPhone
| 15 Pro.
|
| This results in part of the UI of your app shown on first launch
| ("Window Controls" menu, containing "App Tools", "Files",
| "Editor", "GitHub") being obscured by the black oval that
| surrounds the camera on the top of the display on these phones.
| This happens in portrait as well as landscape orientation.
|
| You'll probably be able to see the same issue if you select the
| iPhone 15 Pro or similar model in the iPhone simulator in Xcode.
| codetrotter wrote:
| Also, I tried to open Glyph3D.xcodeproj from the GitHub repo in
| Xcode and got an error message that says:
|
| > The project 'Glyph3D' is damaged and cannot be opened.
| Examine the project file for invalid edits or unresolved source
| control conflicts.
|
| > Path: /Users/user/src/LookAtThat/Glyph3D.xcodeproj
|
| > Exception: didn't find classname for 'isa' key
|
| Although this could also just be that the version of Xcode I
| have installed is too old. I haven't used Xcode in a while so I
| haven't updated it for a while either.
|
| My currently installed version of Xcode is Xcode version 15.0.
| tikimcfee wrote:
| Hey there!
|
| In reverse order, I'd say yes, you may want to try at least
| Xcode 15.4, and preferably 16.0. I've also had issues with
| older versions of Xcode on the M series, and have had to
| update begrudgingly across versions over the years.
|
| And, to the 'safe area' issue you're mentioning, I do
| appreciate the comment. I have a pretty rough version of
| windowing in the app, and it partially relies on a a full
| view layer. Ideally I'd take advantage of said safe area, but
| I'd need to clean up a few things first.
|
| Now that I'm being reminded that this is a first-time user
| experience, I'll put this on the list!
| dlivingston wrote:
| I tried this out on an iPhone 15 Pro.
|
| Some notes:
|
| - Opening in portrait mode, the Window Controls title bar is
| obscured by the Dynamic Island. I cannot move this window without
| going to landscape orientation.
|
| - The "Open Folder" button on the Files window doesn't work. File
| access is never requested.
|
| - The App Tools window looks funky in landscape mode. The tab bar
| is only 50% filled, vertically.
|
| - Windows appear in inconvenient locations, offscreen, partially
| obscured, or have strange sizing. I found myself rotating between
| portrait and landscape mode frequently just to do basic UI
| interactions.
|
| - Global Search completely obscures other windows, and its title
| bar is offscreen. This breaks the app. I have to force-close to
| get it back into a working state.
|
| You should probably pull iPhone support until this is tested more
| thoroughly. I imagine similar issues occur on iPad. Not to be
| harsh, but it's literally unusable on iPhone in its current
| state.
| tikimcfee wrote:
| Thanks for the input!
|
| - Yep, it's annoying to have the current window controls
| overlayed by the safe area. You can still move it around if
| you're careful enough, but yes, it's not great.
|
| - The mobile app expects you to download from Github directly
| for now, because yes, there's no direct file import yet. Not a
| hard add, but just needs a bit of a different pipe to either
| copy or access the out of sandbox files.
|
| - Yes, the mobile windowing controls are meant more to allow
| access to all the demos for now, not for a pretty UI. It's not
| terrible on iPad since you can use the pencil for more
| accuracy, but I did have a plan to put the tabbed and sidebar
| controls back in place for mobile at some point.
|
| - Sorry about the search; if the 'reset' control doesn't do the
| trick, you might be out of luck for this version. The same fix
| I need to put in place to work within the current screen's safe
| area is the same that would keep these windows within viewport.
| And, ideally, to include a similar 'IDE' view as the desktop to
| avoid these multi window cases that are inconvenient or broken.
|
| I'll be focusing on a few changes related specifically to
| mobile UI in the next few builds of this. Touch, for example,
| has no way to rotate along the y-axis, and there's no way to
| 'hover' for bookmarking on tap.
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