Changes are in store for the Developer CD Series, starting with me: I've been producing these discs since the July 1993 edition, and it's time for a small step up (and maybe a bit sideways). I have recently been offered a long-sought opportunity to devote myself to writing code full-time, both for web and FTP tools, and applications like Apple HTML Local Search. I'll be leaving you in the capable hands of Meredith Best (mbest@apple.com), who has been doing much of the pre-production of the CD for the past several months.
Many thanks to all of you who have shared your comments and ideas, both via email and at past WWDCs and EDFs. I'll miss working directly with developers; hopefully some of you will see fit to continue to yell at me about Local Search, SWAt, and whatever else i can convince my boss to let me do.
Well, back to business; in addition to updates to the Gestalt Selectors List, Inside Macintosh, and the Installer SDK, here are this month's new and revised packages.
Apple Guide 2.1 Update: This folder contains updates to the Apple Guide SDK. New features of Apple Guide 2.1 include:
• Apple Guide now supports help access from OpenDoc processes, which involves numerous parts and not a single application process as in the previous help environment. For information on providing guide files for OpenDoc parts, please see the Develop Issue 27 Article titled "Using Apple Guide 2.1, OpenDoc".
• Now supports the ability to access multiple guide files combining the topic areas, index, and look for content across all open guide files.
• There is now CFM 68k glue code present for 68k apps that want to link with the 'AppleGuideGlueLib.68K' shared library code.
•Applications no longer have to build and handle the Help menu if they want their guide files to reside in a folder other than the application's folder. By including a Guide Directory resource (type = 'gdir'; id = -16384) in their application, they can specify a directory for AG to search for guide files other than the application's directory. See 'Guide Directory Resource' topic below.
• Whether an application has guide files or not, Apple Guide was searching through the app's directory 5 different times for guide files. This is now a single search and is much faster. Any guide file information found is cached for performance.
ColorSync 2.1.1GM: ColorSync® 2.1.1 is a second-generation color management system which offers prepress quality color matching and separations. ColorSync 2.1.1 offers substantial benefits for developers. Now there’s a standard architecture and profile format for color matching on the desktop that delivers the solution that users have asked for. No more decisions about which applications programming interface (API) and profile format to use, or time wasted writing custom routines. The ColorSync 2.1.1 API provides the most powerful “plumbing” for color management.
develop Issue 28: This is the electronic version of develop magazine. Articles in issue 28 include:
Coding Your Object Model for Advanced Scriptability by Ron Reuter. Basic support for an Apple event object model isn’t too tough, but supporting more complex scripts takes some planning, and can trip you up in subtle ways if you’re not careful. This advice will help you out.
New QuickDraw 3D Geometries by Philip J. Schneider. QuickDraw 3D 1.5 includes several useful new geometric primitives. This article introduces the new primitives and discusses the differences among the various polyhedral primitives, both new and old.
QuickDraw GX Line Layout: Bending the Rules by Daniel I. Lipton. The typographic capabilities of QuickDraw GX are without peer, but until now drawing that beautiful text along an arbitrary path took a concerted effort. Here’s a library that makes it easy to do.
MacApp Debugging Aids by Conrad Kopala. Programming with a framework saves time and effort, but debugging can be difficult, since there’s a lot going on beneath the surface. These techniques for detecting problems in MacApp programs can help.
Chiropractic for Your Misaligned Data by Kevin Looney and Craig Anderson. Misaligned data accesses on PowerPC processors can be very expensive. Two tools that will help you detect misalignment problems are presented here, along with some advice on avoiding misalignment in the first place.
THE OPENDOC ROAD: OpenDoc Memory Management and the Toolbox by Troy Gaul and Vincent Lo. Managing memory allocation in your OpenDoc part editor can be a little tricky.
PRINT HINTS: Safe Travel Through the Printing Jungle by Dave Polaschek. Printing is often much more complex than it needs to be. By keeping it simple and staying on the well-trod path, you can protect yourself.
BE OUR GUEST: Source Code Control for the Rest of Us by D. John Anderson and Alan B. Harper Source control doesn’t need to be complex, as the simple tools presented here will show.
MPW TIPS AND TRICKS: Automated Editing With StreamEdit by Tim Maroney. The MPW tool StreamEdit provides you with powerful, flexible, scriptable text editing, at the price of just a little complexity.run us through the wringer once again.
THE VETERAN NEOPHYTE: Confessions of a Veteran Technical Writer by Tim Monroe. Enlightening trade secrets from someone who writes the documentation we all depend on.
Developer Notes Update: Developer Notes contain descriptions of new hardware and software features, comparisons with existing CPUs, and expansion card design information. This month features a new note describing the Macintosh PowerBook 1400.
The PowerBook 1400 computer is an all-in-one notebook computer based on the PowerBook 5300 computer but with improved capabilities and an all-new case design. The PowerBook 1400 computer has a PC card slot, an expansion bay, an internal expansion slot, an infrared link, and space for a rechargeable battery.
SimpleText Sample: This is some SimpleText source code. It shows how to write SimpleText, implements calling PPC library from 68k code, using AppleGuide, and other swell things.
Snippets Update
DeskPat: This snippet how you can access the "Desktop Pattern" and the "Set Utilities Pattern" pattern. (This pattern is set by holding down the option key in the Desktop Patterns Control Panel.) This control panel uses resources of type 'ppat' to store this pattern. The `ppat' resource is stored in the System file in your System Folder; the desktop pattern has an ID of 16 and the utilities pattern has an ID of 42. Since this is not documented, it could be subject to change at any moment. You should be careful when using this.
PDlog Expand: This example shows how to add items to print dialogs (with balloon help and sub-dialogs). Sample code accompanying Tech Note PR09. This version: New & Improved, appy with LW 8.4.1, can add lists.
ROMResourceDump 1.0d1: This little utility copies all of the resources in the Macintosh's ROM into a file called "ROM Resource Dump File". This is useful for the insanely curious, those with a professional "need to know" (like DTS engineers), and as a trivial Resource Manager sample.
Toolbox Assistant: Toolbox Assistant gives you rapid access to up-to-date information about the Macintosh API. It provides a complete reference to the managers documented in Inside Macintosh, including their data structures, routines, constants, and resources.
QuickView gives you extensive hypertext links for rapid, easy navigation and provides useful features such as copy text, fast full-text search, user annotations, and resizable windows.
This release updates the QuickView application to version 2.3e4; see the document "QuickView 2.3e4 Release Notes" for details. New databases have been added to the Toolbox Assistant package--OpenDoc, OpenTransport, Cyberdog and ODF. See the file "Read Me First!" for installation and other information.
