Charles Chamberlain

apricot: a structure editor for ui

2023-07-06

apricot.inclouds.space

Wanted to share a project I worked on earlier this year! It's a structure editor that makes it surprisingly easy to "type" out a user interface.

I originally thought of Apricot as a prototyping tool — a place to quickly get some dynamic behaviour wired up to a UI, without worrying too much about pixel-perfect fidelity. Weirdly, a lot of prototyping tools nowadays go the other way — focusing on pictoral representation while mostly leaving out semantic behaviour.

I also considered using Apricot as a template builder in redpear. But this kind of interaction can be useful in many contexts! One could even imagine a whole smalltalk-y programming environment based around easily typed and edited user interfaces... 🌱