About Inside Macintosh
The Inside Macintosh library of books is a complete technical reference to the system software provided for Macintosh computers by Apple Computer, Inc. You'll need some or all of the Inside Macintosh books--in addition to the documentation for your specific software development environment--to write applications and other software components that run in the Macintosh Operating System.Books in the Inside Macintosh series are designed primarily as reference books and not as step-by-step tutorials. (The main exception to that rule is this book, Inside Macintosh: Overview, which is a general introduction to programming on Macintosh computers and to the other Inside Macintosh books.) Nonetheless, there is sufficient "how-to" material in each book that you should be able to successfully implement the features of some particular part of the Macintosh system software by reading the appropriate chapters in Inside Macintosh. Moreover, some of these books contain special introductory chapters that explain general concepts and provide implementation details for specific parts of the system software. For example, the chapter "Introduction to File Management" in the book Inside Macintosh: Files provides a complete explanation of how to implement the typical File menu commands.
If you are new to programming for the Macintosh system software, you should begin by reading this book, Inside Macintosh: Overview. Once you understand the material presented here, you can then usefully turn to other Inside Macintosh books. In all likelihood, you'll next want to look at two books covering the Macintosh Toolbox:
If your application is concerned with either text or graphics, you need to look at one or both of:
You'll also need to learn more about the main parts of the Macintosh Operating System. You can get most of the information you need from these three books:
- Inside Macintosh: Imaging
- Inside Macintosh: Text
See the Afterword, beginning on page 183, for a more detailed description of the contents of these and other books in the Inside Macintosh series.