heckj

Using Combine (v0.6) available!

A new version of Using Combine is available! The free/online version of Using Combine is updated automatically as I merge changes, and the PDF and ePub versions are released periodically and available on Gumroad. https://gumroad.com/js/gumroad.js Purchase Using Combine The book now has some amazing cover art, designed and provided by Michael Critz, and has benefitedContinue reading “Using Combine (v0.6) available!”

navigating Swift Combine, tuples, and XCTest

What started out as a Github repository to poke at SwiftUI changed course a few weeks ago and became a documentation/book project on Combine, Apple’s provided framework for handling asynchronous event streams, not unlike ReactiveX. My latest writing project (available for free online at https://heckj.github.io/swiftui-notes/) has been a foil for me to really dig intoContinue reading “navigating Swift Combine, tuples, and XCTest”

Writing with an AsciiDoc toolchain

I was about to start off with I’m not a technical writer by trade, but I realized that what I should be saying is “In addition to many other skills, I have done quite a bit of technical writing”. I have several published books and articles in my past, one book even still “in print”.Continue reading “Writing with an AsciiDoc toolchain”

Commodity and fashion with SwiftUI

I’m only just starting to dig into the new declarative UI framework that Apple announced at WWDC this year: SwiftUI, but already there are a few patterns emerging that will be fascinating to watch in the Mac & IOS development community in the coming months. The huge benefit of SwiftUI is, as a declarative framework,Continue reading “Commodity and fashion with SwiftUI”

SceneKit interaction handling – Experiment439

A staple of science fiction movies has been 3D holographic visualizations and controls. Most efforts I’ve seen at taking real visualization data and putting them into a 3D context haven’t been terribly successful. At the same time, the advance of AR and VR makes me suspect that we should be able to take advantage ofContinue reading “SceneKit interaction handling – Experiment439”

IOS Dev Diary – using UIDocument

I have been working on an artist utility app, with the primary purpose to present an image and super-thin grid overlay. The inspiration came from the cropping functionality in the Photos app – but that’s very ephemeral to a the act of croping an image, and isn’t easily viewable on a continued basis (such asContinue reading “IOS Dev Diary – using UIDocument”

Blossoms

IOS Dev Diary – accessibility quirk with “Bold Text”

I just worked around a surprisingly tricky bug. The “Bold Text” accessibility feature in IOS has some really surprising impacts – it changes the rendering of images, specifically toolbar images. In the IOS app I’m working on, I have a toolbar icon that I made in vector format (PDF). In the back and forth ofContinue reading “IOS Dev Diary – accessibility quirk with “Bold Text””

Back to NetNewsWire

I started with RSS and NetNewsWire as an aggregator quite a while ago to keep up with the blogs and other various information sources I wanted to follow. It was the most effective way of keeping up with the developer communities I was interested in. Things progress, change, and generally move – and I movedContinue reading “Back to NetNewsWire”

IOS 12 DevNote: Embedded Swift Frameworks and bitcode

A side project for the barista’s at my favorite haunt has been a fun “getting back into it” programming exercise for IOS 12. It’s a silly simple app that checks the status of the network and if the local WIFI router is accessible, and provides some basic diagnostic and suggestions for the gang behind theContinue reading “IOS 12 DevNote: Embedded Swift Frameworks and bitcode”