Aug 85 Letters
Volume Number: 1
Issue Number: 9
Column Tag: Letters, Reviews
Letters, reviews
Dr. Tom's Reference Decks
Tom Programs of Washington DC has announced a set of reference cards keyed to
Inside Macintosh for developers and programmers. Each card lists information about a
single toolbox trap call, giving the trap name, address, parameters and notes on how to
make use of the trap routine. Both the toolbox and OS are covered. Three sample cards
are shown below full size. As you can see, there is quite a bit of technical information
summarized for each routine. This set is a must for anyone doing programming in
assembly or C where toolbox calls must be made directly. It provides a handy quick
reference during programming that can eliminate the need to flip through the
un-referenced Inside Macintosh book.
Three decks are being offered, printed on card stock and color coded by manager.
Each of the three sets sell for $21.95, a very reasonable price. Alternately, you can
buy the entire set as a Microsoft File data base for $59.95, but we think the index card
format is much more handy, since your computer is hardly free to run File while your
writing code! Contact Tom Programs, Suite 34T, 1500 Massachusetts Ave., NW in
Washington, DC. 20005. Or call (223-6813). Or bag the formalities and just send
for the goods: Deck 1, 2 or 3 @ $21.95 each, File Data Base @ $59.95 or both
combined for $99.95. Include $3 for shipping.
One Flew Over The QuickDraw's Nest
Valuable Information Press announces a new technical Macintosh Programming
book by Gregg Lewis of Montreal, Canada, titled "One Flew Over the QuickDraw's Nest
(a fan of Jack Nicholson's no doubt!) This book is designed for people who want to
program their Macintosh! (Where have I heard that before?) Should be great stuff for
MacTutor fans. The book sells for $24.95 and is being distributed by Jim Fitzsimmons
at Mac America, the same distributor who handles MacTutor, Macazine and the
Macintosh Buyer's Guide. Contact Jim directly to reserve an advance copy. The final
manuscript is being prepared for printing now and is expected to be available from
Jim at the Mac Expo in Boston at the MacTutor booth. Contact Mac America, (714)
779-2922.
Here is a sample chapter from the book, re-printed with Gregg Lewis's
permission [Since Gregg speaks French, some english grammer is still being revised
prior to final printing]:
REVIEW
At this stage, you and I are perfectly aware that we still have a long way to go
before we can set up a program together. We have brought up a certain amount of
notions, and we'll be obliged to extend some of the points raised.The first approach was
very schematic, of course. Now that a collection of concepts has been provided, which
is supposed to have fixed all the spare parts in our minds, let's penetrate more in
depth each component. Don't expect to really understand the meaning of everything
until we go together through the commented program lines.
HOWS AND WHYS OF THE MANAGERS
In order to have modular programming, the people at Apple wrote a set of
procedures and functions for each specialised operation within the Macintosh™. They
constantly used the same variable and type definitions; that is the same words. They
designed them such a way that, in a given structure, they always found the required
types and the amount of definitions they needed. So, they designed several basic
structures. Some examples are the types Point, Rect, cursor or bitmap, which we saw
in QuickDraw.
Adding some basic functions, they wrote a whole nucleus to perform specialised
low-level tasks. This nucleus has been named... Managers. And each specific task
oriented Manager is named for its purpose. The Manager philosophy allows modular
programming, which brings compactness in coding, but it is not the only reason why.
As an external programmer, you've been using those procedures and definitions for a
week, you eat with them, you sleep with them, you drink in their company, you... for
the rest of your life. They're in your mind forever, and ever. In short, you know them,
you know what they do, you relate a name to a function, and with the mnemonic names
used, you do not loose time in associating a name with the meaning of a type, a
procedure, or a function and the purpose of it. Does the routine 'GetNextEvent' belong
to the Font Manager? Certainly not.
These mnemonics can tell immediately which Manager the function or procedure
you are reading - or writing - belongs to. And, as said previously, within one week,
they are part of yourself. There are more than 480 different routines, but actually,
only some 80 are currently used. Obviously, this is a small number, and just like the
individuals you happen to meet daily, you know them after a short while.
HOWS AND WHYS OF AN EVENTS LOOP
The whole interaction between the application, the user and the system goes via