The Copland Human Interface Toolbox introduces HIObjects, a class hierarchy of SOM objects that provide a robust set of human interface element services. HIObjects will replace the Window Manager, Control Manager, Dialog Manager, List Manager, Menu Manager and other procedural interfaces, as the preferred human interface API. Please refer to the Human Interface Toolbox document on the Developer’s Conference CD for an overview of HIObjects. For a detailed description of the HIObject base class definition, see the HIObjects Class Definition document.
In the future releases of ResEdit 3.0, a developer will be able to interactively lay out and edit the initial state of any HIObjects in his application using an intuitive, WYSIWIG, drag-and-drop-aware interface. For the first developer release, Apple is providing a simple editor that will instantiate most of the various classes of HIObjects, to allow you to more easily try out these new services.
The current editor for HIObjects is functional, but fragile. If you specify a resource ID reference for a resource not present in your application, the editor will not warn you of this problem. Please note also that the resource data specified in this editor may change and may not be forward compatible with the shipping version of the HIObject resource data.
The editor can be used to create the following types of HI Objects (resources of type 'hiob'):
• HIWindow
• HIBevelButton
• HICheckBox
• HIRadioButton
• HIDisclosureTriangle
• HILittleArrows
• HIProgressIndicator
• HIPushButton
• HISlider
• HIEmbeddingPanel
• HIRootPanel
• HIIcon
• HIPicture
• HICaption
Unfortunately, editors are not provided for all of the HIObject classes. For the following classes, you will have to create objects programmatically. (This is akin to using NewControl programmatically, rather than using GetNewControl and creating a 'CNTL' resource.)
