OP: this is really neat, but i'm curious - what was your motivation for creating something so similar to autolayout's first party visual format language?
Have you tried using it? It's all string-typed, and the worst when you don't get any error until you compile the app and then it complains you have an error in your layout "code" (which is just a string). Layout in code should be checked at compile time, which this project seems to attempt.
This is indeed vastly inspired by Visual Format Language purposefully so, so that there's nothing more to learn.
This actually does pretty much the same thing behind the hood. We can say this is just Apple's visual format on steroids.
Three reasons mostly motivated us : 1. having the compiler on our side and not just hope the string would parse fin at runtime.
2. Laying out Horizontal and Vertical layout at the same time
3. Having something readable cause readable == maintainable :)