Open Radar

 
from the named value in code. This is so great that I wish it would be carried over into other types of assets.

In the web-dev world desginers have started using "pattern libraries" for collecting, organizing and distributing the design specs for their projects. Pattern libraries are effectively live style guides that specify the color palette, type treatments, iconography, and widget styles used throughout the project. (For more dicussion see http://alistapart.com/blog/post/getting-started-with-pattern-libraries and http://sfdc-styleguide.herokuapp.com for another example "in the wild".)

I believe expanding asset catalogs to be the Cocoa equivalent of a pattern library would be a massive benefit for the community. Currently we're limited to images in the asset catalog, with other related design-type information scattered throughout the system: Interface Builder recently gained support for custom fonts, but they're still tied to their filesystem name (which prevents an engineer from using a semantic name in code while allowing a designer to swap out font/weight/size variants as the app is being developed), individuals can drag colors into the handful of wells in their own color picker but there is no convenient way to share a common palette with a team.

Specifically, what I would like to see added to asset catalogs are:
- A color palette where the name of each color can be specified (e.g. "primary-color" would map to a #00FF1E swatch in the palette)
- Specific font face/weight/size combinations that can be named individually (e.g. "header-font" would map to Helvetical Neue, Bold, 48pt in the list)

Further, more advanced, options that derive from the "primitive" asset catalog values would also be nice; such as the ability to specify button styling (derived from background image, font, color). Really, anything that can be styled with UIAppearance should be fair game.