| ||||||||
Cool Mac Gear• iPod Video • iPod nano • iPod 1G-2G • iPod 3G • iPod 4G • iPod Mini • PowerBook-iBook • Garageband |
Charles Moore Checks Out “ Building Cocoa Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide”
I’m not calling this article about Simson Garfinkel & Michael K. Mahoney’s new book, Building Cocoa Applications, a review, because for someone is ignorant as I am about computer programming to presume to critically evaluate a programming manual would be an act of hubris. 
However, the publisher, O; Reilly, kindly send me a review copy, and having dug into it a bit, I’m inclined to believe that had I the time and the inclination, this book could teach even me, a complete neophyte, how to create a Cocoa program, although its intended audience is serious developers making the transition to writing Objective-C programs for OS X, and it assumes some facility with programming in general and the ANSI C language in particular. This is the book covers a wide range of related technology for: • The Aqua graphical user interface, Cocoa developer tools, object-oriented concepts, in the Objective-C language • Cocoa programming and graphics concepts: nibs, icons, delegation, resizing, events, responders, tasks, pipes, color, Rich Text, the mouse, zoom buttons, pasteboard, modal sessions, and drag-and-drop • The Cocoa environment: Darwin and the Window server, the document based architecture, the Quartz drying system, Cocoa’s preferences and default systems, and facilities for saving, loading, and printing. Cocoa is an object-oriented development environment heavily grounded in the NeXTSTEP/OpenSTEP OS that is purely a Mac OS X native, as opposed to the Carbon API that converts Classic Mac OS programs to run natively in OS X. Building Cocoa Applications walks the reader through building three functional Cocoa applications: Calculator (Part II) MathPaper (Part III) GraphPaper (Part IV) The authors affirm that programmers with only a few months exposure report that they can develop a Cocoa application 3 to 10 times faster than they would could using other development environments such as Microsoft Foundation Classes Building Cocoa Applications is divided into four parts: Part I, Cocoa Overview, discusses the Mac OS X Aqua interface, Cocoa developer tools, the Objective-C language Cocoa is written in, and Cocoa programming itself. Part II focuses on building the first complete application, Calculator. The chapters in this part of the book extend the application, piece by piece, by introducing such features as nibs, icons, delegation, resizing, events, and responders. Part III focuses on building\ MathPaper. The chapters in this part of the book extend MathPaper by developing both the front and back ends using a variety of Cocoa classes and methods. They introduce Cocoa’s document-based architecture, tasks, pipes, Rich Text format, handling document files, and using Quartz to draw in windows. Part IV focuses on building the GraphPaper application, a more complex multithreading application that graphs mathematical functions in multiple dimensions and that uses mouse-over capabilities to identify graph points. The chapters in this part of the book add more advanced Mac OS X features such as multithreading, color, mouse events, zoom buttons, pasteboards, services, preferences, and the defaults database. By the end of the book, readers who have built the applications as they have read will have a solid understanding of what it really means to develop complete and incrementally more complex Cocoa applications. The first chapter of each of Parts II, III, and IV these three parts introduces the application and builds its most basic functionality. Each subsequent chapter adds a new layer of functionality. To utilize the technologies and techniques described in the book, you will need a Mac computer running 0S X 10.1 or later, and a copy of Mac OS X Developer Tools, which is conveniently included free with Mac OS X. Chapter 1, Understanding The Aqua Interface, is actually one of the best, concise descriptions of Aqua and how to use it that I have read anywhere. The book is liberally illustrated with OS X screen shots, which look great even in black and white, and there are also numerous graphs and code samples. The application building projects are presented in a progressive, step-by-step structure, is the book’s subtitle indicates, and as noted above, I didn’t find the approach intimidating even as a programming ignoramus. However, that’s pretty much all the comment I can offer regarding the book’s content. I am simply not competent to say more. There is a comprehensive Table Of Contents, which I have included here in the Appendix, and a 15 page index. Here are some comments from the authors and publisher:
The book includes extensive source code, available for download from the O’Reilly web site, along with an appendix listing additional resources. Building Cocoa Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide For more information, visit: Appendix Table of Contents Preface Part I. Cocoa Overview 1. Understanding the Aqua Interface What Makes Mac OS X So Special? A Quick Look at the Mac OS X User Interface Basic Principles of the Aqua Interface The Mouse and Cursor Window Types and Behavior Menus and the Menu Bar The Dock Controls The Finder Configuring Your Desktop, Step by Step Menu Guidelines and Keyboard Equivalents Working with the Filesystem, Step by Step Summary Exercises References 2. Tools for Developing Cocoa Applications Developer Tools Utilities Working with the Terminal Debugging Programs with gdb User Interface Design Summary Exercises 3. Creating a Simple Application with Interface Builder Getting Started with Interface Builder Adding Objects to Your Application Objects, Messages, and Targets Summary Exercise 4. An Objective-C Application Without Interface Builder The Tiny.m Program An Introduction to Objective-C Tiny.m Revisited Summary Exercises References Part II. Calculator: Building a Simple Application 5. Building a Project: A Four-Function Calculator Getting Started: Building the Calculator Project Building the Calculator’s User Interface Building the Calculator’s Controller Class Customizing Buttons and Making Connections Compiling and Running a Program Compiler Error Messages The enterDigit: Action Method Adding the Four Calculator Functions Adding the Unary Minus Function to the Controller Class The Files in a Project Summary Exercises 6. Nibs and Icons Customizing MainMenu.nib Managing Multiple Nibs Adding Icons to Applications Changing Calculator’s Application Icon Cocoa’s NSImage Class Summary Exercises References 7. Delegation and Resizing Handling Different Bases Delegation Disabling Buttons for BetterMultiradix Input Resizing Windows Programmatically Two Very Important Classes: NSWindow and NSView Summary Exercises 8. Events and Responders Events and the NSResponder Chain Events and the NSApplication Object The Event Loop Catching Keyboard Events for Our Calculator Summary Exercises References 9. Darwin and the Window Server Unix, Mach, and the Mac OS X Environment The Window Server and Quartz Seeing All the Processes Summary Exercises References Part III. MathPaper: A Multiple-Document, Multiprocess Application 10. MathPaper and Cocoa’s Document-Based Architecture The MathPaper Application The Evaluator Back End Cocoa’s Document-Based Architecture Building MathPaper’s Front End Summary Exercises References 11. Tasks, Pipes, and NSTextView Processes, Pipes, and Resources Making Evaluator a MathPaper Auxiliary Executable MathDocument Class Modifications Creating PaperController, a Subclass of NSWindowController The NSScrollView and NSTextView Classes PaperController Class Modifications Summary Exercises 12. Rich Text Format and NSText Rich Text Format Creating an RTF Class Integrating Our RTF Class into MathPaper Summary Exercises 13. Saving, Loading, and Printing Data Management with NSDocument Saving to a File Loading from a File Marking a Document Window as Edited Adding Printing Capability Summary Exercises 14. Drawing with Quartz Animation in an About Panel The Quartz Window Server Implementing the About Panel in MathPaper Quartz Graphics Data Types Timers Putting It All Together Summary Exercises References 15. Drawing in a Rectangle: More Fun with Cocoa Views The Advantages of NSView’s drawRect: Method BlackView: An NSView That Paints Itself Black A Closer Look at the NSView Class BarView: An NSView with a Scaled Coordinate System PolygonView: A Non-Opaque NSView Responding to Events in an NSView Autosizing Multiple Views in a Window Summary Exercises Part IV. GraphPaper: A Multithreaded, Mouse-Tracking Application 16. GraphPaper: A Multithreaded Application with a Display List GraphPaper’s Design Working with Multiple Threads Building the GraphPaper Application Extending the Display List Summary Exercises References 17. Color Colors and Color Objects Adding Color to GraphPaper Summary Exercises 18. Tracking the Mouse Tracking the Mouse Adding Mouse Tracking to GraphPaper Summary Exercises References 19. Zooming and Saving Graphics Files Adding a Zoom Button to GraphPaper Saving to PDF Saving to TIFF Creating an Accessory NSView Summary Exercises 20. Pasteboards, Services, Modal Sessions, and Drag-and-Drop Cut, Copy, and Paste with the Pasteboard Using the Pasteboard in GraphPaper Services Creating Your Own Service Drag-and-Drop Summary Exercises 21. Preferences and Defaults Preferences and the Defaults Database System Adding Defaults to GraphPaper Making the Preferences Panel Work with Defaults Setting Up a Multi-View Panel Summary Exercises Appendix:. Cocoa Resources Index
Page: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
|
Cool Mac Gear• iPod 1G-2G • iPod 3G • iPod 4G • iPod Mini • PowerBook-iBook • Keyboard Skins • Garageband
| ||||||
|
| ||||||||
