In This Edition: Release 16 Installing Welcome Back The Element Panel grows Drag-and-Drop anywhere The sequence Looking Ahead

Installing Europa, and other things

The installation process remains the same: mount the installer disk image, drag the new Helix RADE onto the Applications folder and let go. If you are updating from an earlier version of Europa, you can also double click the Install Update to quickly install the new version of Helix RADE.

If you did not install the new Helix Utility last month, you must — one last time — open the “Helix Diagnostics” folder and drag Helix Utility to your Applications folder. Once you’ve done that, you can eject the disk image and go to work.

In addition to some exciting new graphic user interface improvements, there are numerous bug fixes and other tweaks in this release. An example some of you will find very useful is the ability to perform a Copy to Volume command by dragging a document icon from Helix to the desktop.

There are a few nice new tweaks in the Inspector window. One shows the “parent” of an icon; that is, where it resides in your collection. This becomes very useful when clicking through the icons in a “Used by” window. Another shows the query expression (using the Abacus Expression Language) for an entry view.

As always, the complete notes regarding what’s new or fixed in this release are found on the Preliminary Release 16 Release Notes page. Now let’s take a look at the highlights…

Drag-and-Drop to and from anywhere

Call us crazy about drag-and-drop, but as we got further and further along with the Element Panel, it occurred to us that if we could drag and drop from there, why not drag and drop from other windows as well?

And wouldn’t you know it? Now Helix RADE will let you do that too!

It also dawned on us that a perfectly logical extension of this behavior would be to allow you to drag and drop icons between relation window as another means of copying and pasting structure. And it is, but not quite yet. That project turned out to be a little longer than we had time for this time around. But it is coming!

And we mean anywhere...including from the "Where used" window (which is not shown in the video below).

The Sequence

Last month, when we introduced the Element Panel, we showed how it would work by means of also waking up the index editor. We said at the time that the Element Panel would simplify the rest of the projects we need to complete.

This month brings the next step in that evolutionary process, showing how that same new Helix graphic interface can be applied to another key Helix icon: the sequence.

As with most Helix objects opened in macOS, some of the work is done in the Inspector. In the case of the sequence, you have actually been able to do most of that for some time now. Things like specifying error message text, or what happens with dialogs. But some icons require, as they always have in Helix, additional screens where input is required. In the sequence editing process, that window is where the steps in the sequence are dragged out and, if necessary, reordered by drag-and-drop.

Here is where you can see the integration of features quite clearly. When you have the sequence editor open, if you want to add an existing view, user or sequence to your sequence, you can now select the appropriate column in the Element Panel and drag there, or you can drag a view directly from a relation window and a sequence or user icon directly from the collection window. And as with the index editor, when you drag anything back out of a sequence window, it will ‘crumple up’ and disappear, provided that you drag it over the Element Panel or Inspector. A future feature will tack itself right here so please bear with the location restrictions for now.

One thing we neglected to point out about the index editor last month, which will also now apply to the sequence, is that old index and sequence windows, if not moved from their default screen locations, will appear at least partially obscured by the Element Panel. Any new icon, i.e., created in macOS RADE, will, when double-clicked, open its editor window to the right of the Element Panel so it is not obscured.

A script that repositions all pre-existing Design Mode windows to compensate for the Element Panel is available on our free scripts page.

A look ahead to November and beyond

Last month, we said that Preliminary Release 17 would bring the template at last and in fact it will, but just not all at once. We have known since Europa began, in fact, way before that, that building a new template and abacus would take significantly longer than a month each.

But it is our intention to have the template editor functional by year end, leaving us only the abacus and user editors, some document work and View by Icon to complete in 2013.

Even though the template will take longer than a month to complete, our plan is to make it available in stages. You might, for instance, be able to simply view your template and adjust some of its properties with the Inspector in the first month, before actually being able to build new template structure.

If you haven’t renewed your Europa Pioneer Plan membership, please contact us right away. If you have tried and failed, tell us and we’ll fix it.

If you still have not yet joined us, and you’re waiting until the work is all done, again we must remind you that we really could use your financial support. It only gets more expensive — in both time and money — not just for you, but for everyone, the longer you wait. Please don’t wait any longer. Join Europa today and help us get to the finish line with a little less stress and strain!

Finally, an update on the aforementioned View by Icon project. We now have nearly enough verbal commitments to make this dream come true. We will be contacting those who have stepped up in the next week or so. There is still time to join this particular effort. If another week or two go by and you have not heard directly from Gil, you can safely assume that your attempt to volunteer has fallen through the cracks and you must contact him again. Don’t be deterred if this feature is important to you. While volunteering to help does not commit you to any particular dollar amount, the time to ante up is nigh. We’re still building the team that will bring this vital part of Helix back. If you’re in the camp that wants this feature restored, contact Gil.