Subject: AppMaker Improves Support for Mac OS X and Carbon
Grantham, NH - July 11, 2001 - Bowers Development announces update 13.1 for
AppMaker. This is an interim update to better support Mac OS X. AppMaker
has long generated Carbon-compatible code. Now, the AppMaker application
itself is Carbonized. The code generators (for C++ and PowerPlant) have
minor tweaks to support custom controls and custom lists.
AppMaker 13.1 was tested with Universal Headers 3.4, Carbon 1.3b5,
CodeWarrior Pro 6 (IDE 4.1), PowerPlant b211fc1, and with Mac OS X, 9.1,
and 8.6. The AppMaker application we classify as Beta, at least partly
because it was built with a Beta release of PowerPlant, but everything
seems to work properly.
We've made minor improvements to the code generators, libraries, and
project stationery for C++ and for PowerPlant. In future releases we will
make similar improvements for AppMaker's other languages.
Apple made small but important changes to the Universal Header files
between UH 3.3 and 3.4. Similarly, Metrowerks made small changes to
PowerPlant. We've updated AppMaker's generators and/or libraries to support
the newer files.
Mac OS X does not support code resources such as CDEFs and LDEFs. We've
carbonized the Pict, Palette, and ProgressBar CDEFs and now generate code
to """"""""Register"""""""" these control definitions. Similarly, we carbonized
AppMaker's custom LDEF and register that list definition. The project
stationery includes these CDEF files.
For this update, we carbonized only the C++ and PowerPlant languages. In
future updates, we will carbonize AppMaker's Plain C, Tools Plus, and
Pascal languages.
Henceforth, we plan to release only a Carbon version of the AppMaker
application. We will no longer build a classic Fat (68K and PPC) version of
AppMaker. The generated code should continue to build for Classic PPC and
Classic 68K as well as for Carbon.
We will test with CW Pro 7 and release an update for it if needed.
About AppMaker -
AppMaker is a programming tool that makes it faster and easier to make a
Macintosh application - not just the user interface, but also the
functional code. With AppMaker you create the menus, windows, dialogs and
their contents by clicking and dragging to arrange what you want on-screen.
You also point and click to declare data structures and to connect UI items
to data items. AppMaker creates resources to describe your design, and
generates """"""""human, professional quality code"""""""" in your choice of either
procedural or object-oriented programming languages.
More than a GUI Builder -
AppMaker's generated code uses the Model-View-Controller (MVC) paradigm.
The Model is composed of data classes and data items which represent the
application's content. The View and Controller are UI items which display
and modify the Model's data.
The MVC paradigm, and the Model component in particular, let AppMaker
generate much more complete code than most other GUI builders. An example
of this is the support for AppleScript. Users were already describing their
data (the Model) to AppMaker. With this information, AppMaker automatically
generates the code that they would have had to be write by hand.
Pricing and Availability -
The AppMaker 13.1 Updater can be downloaded from the Bowers Development web
site, http://members.aol.com/bowersdev/LateNews.html AppMaker CD #13 is
available now from Developer Depot, http://www.devdepot.com/, or from
Bowers Development, http://members.aol.com/bowersdev/. The $199 price
includes a one-year subscription.
About Bowers Development -
Bowers Development was formed in 1989 to develop programmer productivity tools.
