Split Layout Framework Adds Animated Focus Views And Cross-Window Drag And Drop

How complicated could a split UI framework be? 😭 This is the 6th one I've implemented in 4 years. Plenty of AI assistance but also plenty of hand-written. All manually organized. Good building blocks present simple interfaces and hide intricate complexity.

Oh yeah, I think I forgot to share zoom/unzoom working too. Other panes find their nearest window edge and animate out that way, with a preference to an edge they're touching (overrides closest distance calculation). This is a fun one.

There is some weird artifacts on this (every frame is NOT perfect) that I'm still trying to diagnose. I haven't been able to figure it out yet. :(

@mitchellh Having “SuperSplit” in every name is madness.

@mitchellh Do you plan on using this in Ghostty?

@thjonml Sure, but nothing I can do about it. It’s like arguing about your paint color to your mailman.

@mitchellh I don't think user interfaces of any kind are your strong point. Ghostty on KDE unfortunately doesn't look good.

@mitchellh crazy idea - on top of being able to focus on an individual pane, can there be a "meta focus"?

i'm wondering if i can have a cheap llm router to take what i'm saying and apply it to the right pane(s)

@thjonml Above my pay grade

@mitchellh Everyone having to reimplement this all the time (vs letting the WM handle it) has annoyed me since we called it MDI. People just need a good tiling WM and leave this out of the application layer's concern.

@ZH1YGD There’s quite a lot of background for that. I’ll leave you to do the research. macOS is another level of quality entirely.

@__smiz Focus is all caller-provided so you can do this.

@mitchellh github link soon?

@mitchellh Given your attention to manual organization while also making use of agents, what are your thoughts on this?

@mitchellh This looks awesome, is this coming to ghostty eventually?

@mitchellh have you seen Clay by @nicbarkeragain? the codebase is neat and might be good for inspiration.

@mitchellh "Good building blocks hide complexity" but do they hide it or just defer it? At what point does the sixth implementation teach you that the complexity was never actually intricate, just scattered?

@mitchellh Leaking CoreAnimation complexity into SwiftUI caller code would've made the API simpler to implement and harder to use correctly. Eating that translation layer internally is the kind of decision that looks like extra work until everyone downstream never has to think about it.

@mitchellh very cool

@mitchellh The real flex isn't the 40 files. It's that the user only sees one.

@mitchellh The only thing I’m sure of is that you will make it happen! Thanks for all the work you do Mitchell!