Comment by lynaghk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lynaghk | Hacker News Reader

Hi HN, author here (along with RyLuke).

We launched Subform on Kickstarter in 2016, but are just now opening up our beta to the public.

Subform's focus is on layout. Dynamic layout systems are pretty functionally complex, but creating them is more of a visual process that really benefits from direct-manipulation and a tight feedback loop. (Rather than the endless tweak-reload/recompile-tweak-reload/recompile cycle)

We started with flexbox, but ended up designing our own layout system, which is both simpler and more expressive.

For HN folks who like thinking about conceptual design: https://medium.com/subform/why-not-flexbox-ddbe60396163

Or if you just want to check out the layout system in code, there's a WebAssembly build: https://github.com/lynaghk/subform-layout

Beyond the layout semantics, we've also spent quite a bit of time on the user experience for adjusting layout and hierarchy in the app: https://medium.com/subform/dynamic-layout-at-design-time-91d...

This seems like a good place to say I really enjoyed watching the video of your talk from Deconstruct Conf 2017 (https://www.deconstructconf.com/2017/kevin-lynagh-choosing-f..., referenced in your medium post) about your design process in removing CSS - gave me some nice insight into the thought that should go into the complexities you expose to users.

Definitely worth a watch for people interested in designing software for use by other people.

Thanks!

I should also say that I think CSS is great --- there's nothing like trying to come up with your own solution to make you appreciate the tradeoffs that other folks have made.

We had the advantage of starting from scratch in a more constrained problem space of UI layout, rather than CSS's reflowable documents + UI sometimes + 20 years of backward compatibility.

Daniel Jackson's work on conceptual design (http://sdg.csail.mit.edu/projects/conceptual/) is a great starting place for thinking about this kind of thing.

The layout engine looks really cool!

I personally think we're long overdue for a Yoga alternative that implements CSS Grid like semantics consistently across Web and React Native. Being able to reuse the same fluid, declarative 2d layout for your responsive website to implement your native mobile/tablet UIs would be a killer feature IMO.

I'd love to see the project turn into an actual open source project with a compatible license though, as opposed to just a tech demo with strict licensing requirements. Part of this is me just wanting to use it for free, but I do also believe building an open-source community around your layout engine can drive adoption of your product and help you improve the layout engine itself at a much faster pace than if it remained closed.

How is the cost for iOS/Android integration?

We don't have a license fee or anything like that.

Right now we're working directly with everyone in the beta to understand their process and make things work.

We've added specific features like CSS/HTML export that people wanted for their workflow, and we've also spent a lot of time on Skype with folks to help them change their "throw pictures over the wall" process to ones that help them better bring their designs to production.

I'm exploring in build a UI (https://talk.remobjects.com/t/potential-way-to-do-almost-cro...) that probably will benefit for have a custom layout engine. I have looked at yoga, but the example in your site look more compelling.

The use case is "simply". I need something that do the layout calculations for me and I take care of call the controls...

You can play around with the engine in code here: https://github.com/lynaghk/subform-layout but the best way to get a sense of things is to use it from within Subform.

Curious to hear more about your use case and what you think of the existing API/demos --- definitely open a Github issue or start a topic on the Subform discussion board after you get a chance to try things out.

Would you consider this to be direct competition for something like Sketch?

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