Add a stack view/group type component to iOS

Originator:frozendevil
Number:rdar://20443038 Date Originated:4/6/15
Status:Closed Resolved:UIStackView added to iOS 9
Product:iOS SDK Product Version:
Classification:Enhancement Reproducible:N/A
 
Both OS X and WatchKit now have "stack" style UI widgets (WatchKit calls them groups but I will refer to them as stacks for the purpose of this radar). It would be extremely beneficial to bring this API/Component over to iOS. This type of component makes sophisticated semi-tabular designs exteremly easy to execute and reason about—instances where a table view may seem ideal but would be more code and runtime overhead than necessary. Typical examples where this would be appropriate are detail screens, "about" screens and settings screen. In fact, prior to autolayout, many of my peers (and I) used this "stack" style of layout as their primary tool for implementing non-table-based screens and simply did it by hand using CGRectDivide().

In lieu of an actual stack view iOS component I've frequently found myself writing ad-hoc autolayout helper classes to simulate the API. The downside of this is that there is no reasonable way to reflect the UI in Interface Builder, and having external requirements means that I generally re-implement a lowest-common-denominator version with just the features I need for any given task, which results in a far less robust component than the standard NSStackView.

The current API for NSStackView is solid and I believe would serve well as the basis (or entirety) of an iOS version.

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