Ligature

A Swift package to aid in text selection, grouping, indentation, and manipulation.

Ligature includes aliases and implementations as needed to make parts of the UIKit and AppKit text interfaces source-compatible.

Warning

This is currently very WIP.

You also might be interested in Glyph, a TextKit 1/2 abstraction system, as well as general AppKit/UIKit stuff like NSUI or KeyCodes.

Installation

dependencies: [
    .package(url: "https://github.com/ChimeHQ/Ligature", branch: "main")
],

Usage

The core protocol for the tokenization functionality is TextTokenizer. It is a little more abstract than UITextInputTokenizer, but ultimately compatible. With UIKit, TextInputStringTokenizer is just a typealias for UITextInputStringTokenizer. Ligature provides an implementation for use with AppKit.

// on UIKit
let tokenizer = TextInputStringTokenizer(textInput: someUITextView)

// with AppKit
let tokenizer = TextInputStringTokenizer(textInput: someNSTextInputClient)

Ligature uses platform-independent aliases to represent many text-related structures. For the most part, these are based on their UIKit representations. Typically, AppKit doesn't have a source-compatible implementation, so wrappers and/or compatible implementations are provided.

typealias TextPosition = UITextPosition
typealias TextRange = UITextRange
typealias TextGranularity = UITextGranularity
typealias TextStorageDirection = UITextStorageDirection
typealias TextDirection = UITextDirection
typealias UserInterfaceLayoutDirection = UIUserInterfaceLayoutDirection

There are a variety of range/position models within AppKit, UIKit, and even between TextKit 1 and 2. Some abstraction is, unfortunately, required to model this. This should be all automatically handled by the TextTokenizer protocol if you are using NSRange or NSTextRange. The cross-platform TextRange type cannot do this without additional work on your part, typically by involving the text view.

Contributing and Collaboration

I would love to hear from you! Issues or pull requests work great. Both a Matrix space and Discord are available for live help, but I have a strong bias towards answering in the form of documentation. You can also find me on mastodon.

I prefer collaboration, and would love to find ways to work together if you have a similar project.

I prefer indentation with tabs for improved accessibility. But, I'd rather you use the system you want and make a PR than hesitate because of whitespace.

By participating in this project you agree to abide by the Contributor Code of Conduct.