Technotes

What's New

By Mark Cookson

Many developers have complained about features they felt were lacking in the Sound Manager. However, many features which were believed to be lacking were actually available, just under documented. This Technote is meant to document the more obscure features of the Sound Manager.

This Technote is directed at application and hardware developers who work with the Sound Manager and want to be sure that they are getting the most out of the Sound Manager and their products.

By Greg Robbins and John Montbriand

Mac OS 8 includes a new Extensible Folder Manager for use by system software and by applications. The Extensible Folder Manager supports FindFolder as well as additional functionality:

• Developers can add folders to the system that can be located via FindFolder
• Folders can be nested within other folders that are locatable with FindFolder
• Calls are available to provide routing information for future versions of the Finder.

  This document describes the Extensible Folder Manager that ships with Mac OS 8 and with future system releases.

By Jim Luther (September 1992),
Edited by Leland Wallace (March 1997)

This Technote shows how to borrow the session reference number of an AFP volume mounted by the Macintosh File System. It also shows how to retrieve other information from the file system for a mounted AFP volume. This revision of the Borrowed AFP Sessions Technote applies to systems that are using AppleShare Client 3.7 and later. Previous versions of the AppleShare client should use the information contained in
Technote NW 16.

By John Montbriand

This Technote provides information of interest to developers creating cards and drivers for use with AppleVision displays.

By Brian Bechtel and Quinn "The Eskimo"

System 7 has a badly defined set of extremely heterogeneous programming environments. In some of these environments, your code can access some system services but not others. The names given to these environments are often overloaded and confusing. This results in a lot of programmer confusion.

This technote attempts to clear up this confusion by assigning each of the execution levels a unique name, describing how and why your code might find itself running at a particular execution level, and outlining the restrictions your code might face when running at that level.

By Brian Bechtel

There is no single unique serial number available across the entire range of Mac OS based computers. There are some techniques which can be used to help differentiate between two Mac OS computers. These techniques are described in this technote.

By John Montbriand

This Technote discusses changes and corrections in the next generation of the Mac OS Operating System, Mac OS 8. This system follows Mac OS 7.6.1 and contains several new and revised features.

By Ingrid Kelly and Robin Mikawa

Starting with Mac OS 8.0, the QuickDraw GX environment will no longer support the GX Printing Manager API. Although this decision will require significant changes to existing system software and applications, it will allow us to transition to a unified printing architecture that will improve the compatibility of QuickDraw GX software in the classic QuickDraw environment. This Technote gives an overview of what a GX application needs to do to support the classic printing architecture.

By John Calhoun and Ingrid Kelly

With the release of Mac OS 8.0, Apple has redesigned and expanded the Color Picker. In doing so, we have changed the Color Picker APIs for developers and expanded on the number and kind of pickers that are available to the end user. This Technote outlines these changes in detail.

By Dave Tarabar

This Technote describes the relationship between the Power Manager on PowerBook computers and the PC Card Manager 3.0.

By Brian Bechtel

This Technote lists errors and additions to the ATA Device Software Guide. We include both corrections to the original guide, as well as some minor additions for ATA Manager 4.0. ATA Manager 4.0 was introduced with the PowerBook 3400.

By Dave Polaschek

For several years, Third-party printer driver developers have wanted an API to add desktop printing to their drivers. This Technote outlines how to add support for this feature.

New and Revised Technotes

In addition to Technotes 1085 to 1096, all previous New and Revised Technotes are also available. A quick, easy-to-scan Table of Contents includes all of these Technotes in an itemized list sorted by date published on the Web. A more robust Table of Contents, which includes a descriptive passage on each Technote, is also available.

Technotes by Alphabetical Category

Alphabetical categories for Apple Technotes are listed here. You may be able to find the answer you are looking for in several of the following categories.

Additional Information

If you want to order copies of new and revised Technotes, download the Notes or the Technote indexes, or contact the Technote Editor about contributing a Note, please see the Additional Technote Information Page.