external interface design tools

[Richmond]

On 09/12/15 18:17, Mike Kerner wrote:
> Has anyone attempted to built an interface using an external tool, say
> Sketch, for instance?  If so, what have you done to make the areas active?
>

For my Devawriter Pro, PISMO and Grendel I used GIMP to make the
graphic components and then assembled them in LiveCode.

I wanted my program to look the same regardless of which platform
it was deployed on, and regardless of any theme-y add-ons; and as
LiveCode buttons do 'mutate' depending on which platform they are
on I made a lot of stuff externally as images.

This is obviously not building a whole interface externally, although
stage 2 involved mocking it up in GIMP [stage 1 involved drawing silly
pictures on paper with lots of coloured pencils].

As LiveCode is capable of a lot of graphic stuff such as drop shadows, 
after importing
images into LiveCode I messed around quite a bit with drop shadows, internal
and external glows, and so forth, to get the effect I desired, grouped 
the finished
image and imported a snapshot of the group as a new image.

Doing this guaranteed that the images would remain the way I intended them
to look regardless of where they ended up.

Obviously, the way I did things, I made graphic areas of my interface active
once everything was assembled in LiveCode.

Richmond.