We've done some additional work on this month's library of technical documentation in Acrobat format. Keywords have been added to most documents in the core set (Inside Macintosh, Macintosh Technical Notes, Developer Notes, and develop ); for details about searching in general and how to use keywords to limit your search results, see the prototype Contents Catalog in the About this CD folder.
develop issues have been broken out by article, similar to the Inside Macintosh books, to make search results more informative and allow retrieval of individual articles from online services; references to individual articles can also be found in the Subject Index folder. Macintosh Technical Notes have a new champion, Tom Maremaa of DTS; check out his new formatting and organization, and send your feedback to AppleLink DEVFEEDBACK or devfeedback@applelink.apple.com.
And, for those who may not be horizontal scrollbar fans, we've included a first attempt at an entire book (the QuickDraw 3D Reference) in HTML format. Please have a look, and send us your feedback at dpfeedback@applelink.apple.com.
All of this, and much, much more; here are this month's new and revised packages.
Apple Guide 2.0 GM Update: This package contains the runtime software for Apple Guide 2.0, which now supports System software versions 7.0 and 7.1. Also included is the book "Apple Guide Complete" in Acrobat format and the latest version of Guide Maker, the authoring environment for creating Apple Guides.
AppleGlot: AppleGlot 2.3 is a text translation tool used by the Apple Localizers to localize Apple Software. AppleGlot extracts the text out of a resource file and dumps it into a text file for translation. Once translated, AppleGlot then replaces the original text by its translation into the resource file. In addition to the regular translation, AppleGlot handles updates from one version to another, and copies over resizeable items. AppleGlot 2.4b1, also provided on this CD, adds several additional features.
Gestalt Selectors List 3.1: This document lists all selectors known to the creator of the Gestalt Selectors List for use with the Gestalt Manager. These can include selector codes installed by Apple system software or by your software. The information in this list is useful for programmers who use the Gestalt Manager with their software (even using externals, as with HyperCard, 4th Dimension, and so on).
Note: This is NOT AN APPLE PRODUCT. It is provided on an AS-IS basis. Apple is not responsible for any problems you may encounter in its use.
GetHelpStrings: This sample extracts the Finder balloon help string from any file or any files in any folder dropped onto the application.
How to Detect a CD: Sample code and discussion of how to detect whether a volume is a CD or not. Discusses the various drawbacks of all the different approaches. It features C sample code demonstrating how to use the device manager, SCSI, and calls to the CD-ROM driver to give pretty good hints about whether a volume is a CD-ROM or not.
iso9660: Example code for building simple ISO 9660 volumes. Demonstrates reading & writing to a device, ISO 9660 format.
Macintosh Technical Notes: Technical Notes are a collection of short (and not-so-short) articles dealing with specific development topics.
This month features 12 new and revised Technotes in Acrobat format on a wide range of topics, from Understanding PCI Bus Performance to Understanding Type 11 and No FPU Installed errors.
Also included is an Author Guidelines for Apple engineers or developers worldwide who want to write or contribute a Technote.The Guidelines explain the new structure and approach to Technotes. Please send any feedback on the new structure to AppleLink DEVFEEDBACK or devfeedback@applelink.apple.com.
PCI Driver Development Kit 2.0: This folder contains information on designing PCI cards and drivers for the PCI-based Power Macintosh CPUs, such as the Power Macintosh 7200, 7500, 8500, and 9500 computers.
This is version 2.0 of the DDK - an update to the PCI Driver Development Kit (DDK) that appeared on the September 1995 CD. The PCI DDK 2.0 contains new headers and libraries, a new tokenizer, updated samples, and updated documentation (notably an update document to Designing PCI Cards and Drivers, and a newer PCI Binding document.)
PeopleSoft/Apple White Paper: Apple and PeopleSoft have launched a partnership that will deliver PeopleSoft applications that run on the Macintosh Operating System. This document is a Technical White Paper that describes the partnership, the product and the direction PeopleSoft is heading.
Performance Tools: This folder contains several tools for testing the performance of code on PowerPC processors. 4PM is a tool that uses special registers in the PowerPC 604 processor to gather performance statistics; the Emulator Control Panel allows you to turn off the dynamic recompilation feature of the 68K emulator; and the POWER Emulator Control Panel allows you to turn off the emulation of IBM POWER instuctions, letting you find them in your code.
QuickDraw 3D Reference (HTML): This is a prototype of the "3D Graphics Programming with QuickDraw 3D" book in HTML format. We are including this on the Developer CD to generate some feedback on design, usefulness, etc. in a feasibility study of HTML as an online delivery mechanism for technical documentation. Please send your feedback regarding this HTML book to dpfeedback@applelink.apple.com.
SDK Documentation: This folder contains documents (and references to documents) from some of the various SDKs in the New System Software Extensions folder on the Tool Chest CD. They are collected here for convenience, and to make the Acrobat search index more complete.
WASTE: WASTE, a WorldScript-Aware Styled Text Engine, is a replacement for textedit. Waste is a text engine that supports worldscript and text larger than 32k. It has built in undo support. It support drag and drop of text, pictures and other objects. It also can suppport tabs. Comes in both C and Pascal versions.
Note: This is NOT AN APPLE PRODUCT. It is provided on an AS-IS basis. Apple is not responsible for any problems you may encounter in its use.
Coming Next Month: At press time, there is still no definite word about a new System Software Update; but if in the next month one does appear, you'll find it here...
