September 93 - SOMEWHERE IN QUICKTIME
SOMEWHERE IN QUICKTIME
DYNAMIC CUSTOMIZATION OF COMPONENTS
BILL GUSCHWAN
QuickTime's component architecture lets you do a number of amazing and useful things
by customizing components, which you can do by deriving one component based on
another. Because QuickTime components are dynamically linked, preexisting
applications can take advantage of a new, derived component without recompiling or
rebooting. And because QuickTime is an extension of system software, the derived
component will provide systemwide functionality.
In this column I'll describe how to use object-oriented techniques to customize
components using a derived component. To illustrate, I'll show you how to customize
the Apple text media handler to "speak" text tracks in movies using Apple's new
Text-to-Speech Manager. You'll find the derived component on this issue's CD, along
with a generic derived component that you can use as a basis for doing your own
customizing. I've also supplied an application to help you debug your component. This
application uses the debugging technique of registering the code inline. It's very basic