Has anyone heard from Garmin as to whether or not Connect IQ (ie. third-party, from the Garmin App Store) complications will (eventually) work on native (built-in watch faces)? And if so, do we have a timeframe?
Has anyone heard from Garmin as to whether or not Connect IQ (ie. third-party, from the Garmin App Store) complications will (eventually) work on native (built-in watch faces)? And if so, do we have a timeframe?
Disclaimer: I have no inside information from Garmin (sorry)
I had the same question when I first looked into complications, and the answer I came up with for myself is that Garmin has only told us that CIQ watchfaces *and* Face It (eventually) can be consumers of CIQ complications. If they have plans beyond that, I don't think anyone here knows or is able to share that with us.
I agree that it would make a lot of sense for Garmin to add CIQ complication support to native watchfaces, but idk if Garmin always does what makes sense to some of us.
I also agree that users give zero Fs about how things work under the covers.
Right now, there is no way to define what is published by CIQ, what that data is, or the data format for a native WF to use.
Not sure I understand the reasoning here. It's funny you said that literally right after you mentioned the "xml for publishing".
[https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/core-topics/complications/#publishingcomplications]
So the information defined in this xml (and the complication itself) is enough for native glance folders, Face It and CIQ watchfaces to use CIQ complications, but not native watchfaces? The usual argument is that native apps can always do more than CIQ apps, but in this case they can somehow do less?
As far as the data format or "what the data is" of a complication goes, the idea is obviously for a CIQ WF developer to allow their users to subscribe to CIQ complications published by other developers without the dev having any special knowledge of the complications other than what's exposed in the API (short name, long name, units, and icon). (Of course there's the pesky issue that, contrary to examples and guidance in the docs, last time I checked it didn't seem possible to serialize/deserialize CIQ complication IDs to storage, which means that it would be tough to properly save a user's complication subscription settings in the suggested way.) (inb4 "you can save the longLabel/shortLabel" - those aren't unique identifiers. As demonstrated in a previous thread, a CIQ complication's ID contains the app ID and complication number, which should make it globally unique.)
The docs also explicitly state the rules Face It will follow when it integrates a CIQ complication. If Face it can follow these rules, I don't see why a native watchface cannot.
[https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/core-topics/complications/#faceitcomingsoon]
it's definitely possible, but I think it's unlikely Robert as native watch faces do not load the connect iq virtual machine.
Are we sure that it's necessary to load the CIQ VM in order to use a CIQ complication? The whole publish-subscribe model, along with the fact that native complications are in the same "bucket" as CIQ complications, seems to suggest otherwise. I could be wrong though, as I have zero insider knowledge.
I guess if loading the CIQ VM is necessary, that might be a dealbreaker depending on how memory is set aside for native watchfaces.