The macOS Template Editor is now enabled. In this first release, only the ability to view a template is provided. Next month the ability to edit a template will be added. This editor takes us into uncharted waters, so we though it would be best to release it first in this ‘read only’ form, so you can see how it is shaping up.

There are still some refinements to the visual presentation to be done — for example, the subform template has no visible border — and Preview mode is not yet available.

One improvement in the template editor is that the placement of the icons within a data rectangle is now calculated so that the name is always visible, with the field on the left and abacus on the right if both are present in a rectangle. (Classic RADE uses absolute coordinates that can hide the icons if you subsequently shrink a rectangle after placing an icon in it.)

The list of known problems and open issues is found in techdb as R7920. We encourage you to review that report and to add to it any problems you observe. At this point, please do not create new reports for Template Editor bugs.

Icon View — also known as Project Cosmos — makes its debut in macOS RADE. This was made possible by Helix users who contributed funds specifically for this feature. Those funds have been spent, so although there are still a few minor issues to be addressed, no further work will be done until all other editors are done (or more contributions come in).

Icon View is fully functional, and there is no reason to refrain from using it, if that is your preference. The list of open issues is found in techdb as R7919. We encourage you to review that report and to add to it any problems you observe. At this point, please do not create new reports for Icon View bugs.

There are currently no menu items for switching view modes — changes must be made through the Inspector (or via AppleScript). Since the Inspector is sensitive to selected icons, you must deselect all icons in an open window in order to access the window’s properties in the Inspector. The Clear Selection (Shift-Command-N) menu item quickly deselects all icons, but late in the game, we discovered that that has a bug of its own (see R7922) so for now you need to Command-click the selected icons to deselect them.

Also, because it is our intention to redesign the ‘icon centering’ code — the code that makes the icons jump from place to place when switching back and forth between Icon View and List View — it is quite likely that, when you first open a collection in Icon View in macOS RADE, the window may appear as an empty slate because the icons are located in another region of the full icon plane. If this happens to you, there are four options:

1. Scroll around in the window until you locate the icons.
2. Use the Super Clean Up command (hold Option key while choosing ‘Clean Up’ in the Icon menu) to pull all of the icons together into the visible space of the window.
3. Use the AppleScript we have developed to provide additional options for arranging icons. This script contains four editable parameters that provide alternative icon arrangements. It can be downloaded from our free scripts page. (Direct Link)
4. Close and reopen the window; sometimes that will cause Helix to relocate the visible area to show some icons.

A tutorial video overview of Icon View is available on our YouTube channel.

View by Name — Along with View by Kind which has been implemented since the first Preliminary Release, and Icon View which debuts this month, the return of the View by Name option restores the three view modes available in Classic RADE. Along with the Classic options, macOS RADE adds two new list sorting options: View by Custom Name and View by Comment.

These view modes are known as Display modes and as a property of the collection or relation icon, the current mode can be specified by selection via the Inspector (see image at right) or with the set display mode to <mode> command via AppleScript. Changing the sort order by clicking on a column header is a feature request that is being tracked in R7545.

The View by Comment options works just as you would expect, but View by Custom Name is slightly different. Instead of sorting by the Custom Name property exclusively, RADE uses the Custom Name if present. If there is no Custom Name for an icon, the regular Name property is used instead. This gives a sort order that matches what is seen in User Mode, and is not a strict ‘by Custom Name’ sort.

Classic compatibility note: Because Classic RADE does not understand the new list sort options, a collection saved in either of the new options, then opened in Classic RADE will open in View by Kind mode. As long as the display mode is not changed in Classic RADE, the macOS display mode will be retained when returning to macOS RADE.