At the time of writing these lines, someone on a plane, train or stool will be excited by some drawings or words scribbled on a napkin that he and his companion are moving to describe the next big idea: how it will look. and how it will work
Bed of roses. Now come the thorns.
Alex Corrado, a senior software engineer, pointed out when the headache starts.
"Getting your ideas for a new application or feature on paper is one of the fastest and most natural parts of brainstorming, but then, ultimately, you need to turn that sketch into code and sooner than you think, 10, 20 , 30 iterations of a sketch really add up. "
This is where a team project that produced something called Ink to Code helps: fundamentally, it gives developers and designers a boost in this process.
A team of interns worked on this idea. "Without ink to code," said a description of the Microsoft store, "developers and designers can brainstorm frames in a variety of media, but then need to recreate their ideas by encoding them from scratch in Visual Studio." .
The introduction of this ink code was made by Lainie Huston, in a Microsoft site blog published earlier this month.
"The urban legend says that some of the best ideas in history began with a napkin: the Gettysburg speech, the poem that gave rise to the national anthem of the United States and the premise of the Harry Potter series." He added, however, that "less charming is the possibility of translating quick sketches into work code".
The result of the Microsoft Garage project is that it helps convert the sketches into useful and functional code. It's an early prototype, but it's a start.
Peter Bright, from Ars Technica, described the premise very clearly: "... designers can sketch the bones of application interfaces with a pen, and Ink to Code will convert those sketches into real code, specifically the XML markup used for the applications of the Universal Platform of Windows and applications of Xamarin for Android ".
The Windows 10 Ink APIs are used, he said, to recognize drawn objects, "converting handwriting to text and frames on screens, buttons, text boxes, and image placeholders."
Ink to Code is now available in the United States and Canada. "While Ink to Code can not give life to a complete view of the application," Huston said, "it significantly reduces the creation of the basic foundation of the application with the power of automation."
It is available for download at the Microsoft store.
So, is it really useful? She said, yes, that collaborative developers and designers can turn Ink to Code into a productive canvas in brainstorming meetings, "or even more important, as a tool that can bridge the gap between collaborators with different design levels or knowledge technique. "
Peter Bright of Ars Technica also clarified what to expect. "It recognizes only some elements of the interface, along with rules and guidelines for aligning things, and only produces basic code without functional parts."
At the same time, Microsoft Garage is Microsoft Garage: "Garage applications do not have to be fully developed, they complete applications," Bright said, "and instead they can be more a viable minimum product to test the basics."
