How to make a GUI for macOS / iPadOS

[m-photo]

Hello Phil,
Hello everybody,

First of all I would like to thank you Phil for that great ExifTool, THANK YOU.

I am an amateur photographer and I use ExifTool for some basic tasks with Automator or the command line directly.
I would like to create a GUI, with some help because I have very very few programming knowledge today.

My goal is to propose a tool where "what we see" has a large part on the screen. Photos side by side, grid of thumbnails, batch processing, and much more.

Now before I start exploring on Xcode, I wonder what files are needed and what is the best way to integrate ExifTool in Xcode:
- for macOS (soon with Sidecar)
- for iPadOS
Is it by executing a process from Xcode like if it was a command line command ? or is there a better and different way ? Probably for iPadOS it will be more difficult ?

If someone here can give me some inputs and directions I would be very happy.

Thank you and have a great day.
MarK

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Mark,

The best way to do this is with something like I've written here for C++.  This C++ object starts an ExifTool process and keeps it running using the ExifTool -stay_open feature.  If you don't use this feature, you will have a startup delay of a fraction of a second each time you run ExifTool.

For iPadOS, you would need to install Perl first, but everything else should be the same.

- Phil

[m-photo]

Hi Mark,

The best way to do this is with something like I've written here for C++.  This C++ object starts an ExifTool process and keeps it running using the ExifTool -stay_open feature.  If you don't use this feature, you will have a startup delay of a fraction of a second each time you run ExifTool.

For iPadOS, you would need to install Perl first, but everything else should be the same.

- Phil

Dear Phil,

Thank you for your kind answer.
I understood what I had to understand and I already made the first tests and going to implement the -stay_open feature soon.
It will take some time until I have something serious to show to the world, but of course I will stick around with some questions in the meanwhile.

Wishing you a great end of the week.
Marc