Parchment

Introduction to the Parchment Project

Parchment is a versatile and highly customizable iOS library that facilitates the navigation between view controllers with an added ability to display various indicators that change as you scroll through content. It’s aimed at developers looking for a dynamic and efficient method to present content in paginated form using either SwiftUI or UIKit.

Features of Parchment

• Customization: The library uses UICollectionView to build menu items, allowing for extensive customization. You can display a range of content types and even subclass the layout for unique behaviors.

• Memory Efficiency: Parchment allocates view controllers only when necessary. This feature is beneficial when dealing with a large number of view controllers, as it avoids the need to initialize all of them upfront.

• Infinite Scrolling: This feature empowers developers to create seemingly endless data sources, which is particularly useful for applications such as calendars.

Getting Started

SwiftUI

For those using SwiftUI, Parchment provides an easy setup for creating paged interfaces.

• Basic Usage: Developers can initiate a PageView with content organized into pages. Each page includes a title and any type of SwiftUI view as its content.

• Dynamic Pages: It supports dynamic pages through collections that translate into pages.

• Modifiers: Developers can refine their PageView with various modifiers to adjust menu item dimensions, spacing, alignments, transitions, and more.

UIKit

When integrating with UIKit, Parchment makes use of the PagingViewController class.

• Basic Usage with UIKit: By initializing with an array of view controllers, developers can display menu items based on these controllers' titles.

• Data Sources: Flexible data sourcing allows for the efficient allocation of view controllers, and it’s perfect for static and infinite sets like in calendars.

• Customization: There are numerous properties to tweak the presentation, from item sizes to colors of various components.

Options

Parchment provides numerous settings that let developers control every aspect of the paging interface, from menu item sizes and spacing, transitioning behaviors, interaction modes, to visual elements like colors and fonts. For instance, developers can adjust how items align within the menu or decide how scrolling should interact with menu transitions.

Installation

Parchment is easily integrated into iOS projects through various dependency managers:

• CocoaPods: Easily include Parchment by adding it to your Podfile.

• Swift Package Manager: Include Parchment in your Package.swift.

• Carthage: Add Parchment through your Cartfile.

Conclusion

Parchment is a powerful tool for developers seeking a customizable, efficient, and versatile paging interface for iOS applications. With support for both SwiftUI and UIKit, it offers flexible implementation options and ample customization opportunities, ensuring developers can create interfaces that suit any design or functionality need.