The Author View
Author is where a hand-written expression becomes a publishable library template — the same Variables workspace from the IDE toolbar, docked beside a full production-sized code pane, plus the draft lifecycle that gets a template from a scratch idea into the shipped library.
The Author view
The Library's Author view carries a draft library, filterable by All, Drafts-only, or by-folder, with a live text search over title, description, tags, and code — so finding a half-finished template you started last week is as easy as finding a published one.
These screenshots were captured in an earlier beta. Toolbar and Library layouts have since changed; the written instructions on this page describe v0.145.4. See A Tour of the Panel for the current controls.
The draft lifecycle
Start a new blank draft, Save it, Publish it into the library — optionally moving it to a target folder in the same action — or send a published expression back to Drafts. Open in IDE sends the raw, still-tokenized source to a new editor tab, so you can keep working on the underlying expression in the full editor without disturbing the draft.
Audition is the real test
Audition here is the same real audition as everywhere else in eXLib — the shared substitution and audition host path, run against your live AE selection. It honors your active pin — a dead pin fails outright rather than silently falling back to whatever's selected in AE — and its revert semantics are untouched by running it. Same headphones glyph, same guarantee, same verdict you'd get from the toolbar.
Adaptive layout
The code editor and the Variables workspace arrange side-by-side (row) or stacked (column) via a persisted toggle, and the code editor's own height is drag-resizable, with a double-click to reset it back to autosize. Every layout choice you make is remembered across sessions.
The header itself sits in two rows: an EDITOR caption on the left, and Save · Audition · IDE · Detect right-aligned on the right, followed by the layout toggles. The Variables section header beneath it is sticky, and carries the CONTROLS segmented selector and the single add-variable button in line with its own section label — so scrolling the code pane never scrolls those controls out of reach.
Work in progress survives a reload
Which working draft you had open, along with unsaved code, wiring, and field edits, is restored automatically the next time you open Author. A new scratch draft remains hot-exit working state until its first successful Save creates a Library item. A draft opened from an existing item stays item-backed, and Save updates that same item.
Save to Library from the editor
The rail's Save action follows the active tab's identity:
- A scratch tab has no Library item to update, so Save snapshots its code, variables, and controls into a new, pre-populated Author draft. It is never auto-published, the tab stays open, and the toast reports how many tokens rode along.
- A tab opened from a Library row or from Author remains attached to that item. Save updates that same Library expression instead of creating a duplicate draft. If the write fails, the edit stays unsaved in the tab and eXLib reports the failure; it does not silently fork a copy.
This is the same one-state hand-off in the other direction: open an item in the IDE, edit it there, and Save returns the change to the item you opened.