April 90 - SPEED YOUR SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT WITH MACAPP
SPEED YOUR SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT WITH MACAPP
CHRIS KNEPPER
Using MacApp, Apple's object-based application framework, saves time and effort for
programmers, and results in an application with the authentic Macintosh look and feel.
Developing a Macintosh application can become a simple matter of selecting and
integrating functionally specific routines with MacApp and letting MacApp take care of
the user interface and other standard application behavior, as this article shows.
Wouldn't it be nice if you could develop a Macintosh application using previously
existing routines? Think of the time and effort you could save if you were able to
integrate functionally specific routines from an application you'd written for another
platform. Or if you were able to obtain such routines from a public source and use
them in your Macintosh application. Or if you could develop such routines yourself, in
a language of your choice, and then use them in multiple applications.
And wouldn't it be nice if you had available to you libraries of routines that did the
tedious work of creating the interface Macintosh users have come to expect? You
wouldn't have to spend time and effort making sure your application did all the things a
well-behaved Macintosh application should do.
Dream no more. MacApp makes all of this possible.
INTRODUCING MACAPP
MacApp is an application framework--a skeletal structure for a program that must be
fleshed out before it is useful. The bones of this skeletal structure are the MacApp
libraries, which handle standard application behavior such as initialization; accessing
documents; managing user interface components, such as windows, buttons,
scrollbars, and text; managing memory; and handling user input. You flesh out this
skeleton by adding functionally specific routines and application-specific code. Figure
1 shows how these pieces fit together.
Figure 1. How MacApp Relates to Your Application
Because of Apple's commitment to MacApp, the MacApp libraries have been maintained
and have matured over time. This has produced libraries that are both versatile,
having been used in many applications to address a variety of needs, and robust,
because they've been tested and debugged in hundreds of applications and on a wide
variety of Macintosh configurations. You can use the code as is or modify pieces that
don't meet your needs exactly.
The MacApp libraries are written in Object Pascal, and are distributed via APDA along
with interfaces in Object Pascal and C++. Also, p1 Modula-2, Version 4.1, an object
language based on Modula-2 now available from the MacApp Developer's Association is
fully compatible with MacApp 2.0 and includes interfaces to the MacApp libraries.
MPW allows you to develop in Object Pascal, C, C++, FORTRAN, and Modula-2 and