Eleven new documents were published today at Apple Developer Connection:

• URL Access Manager Reference: Describes the C API for transferring data to and from a URL from within an application.
• Transferring Data With URL Access Manager: Explains how to transfer data to and from a URL from within a Carbon application.
• Text Services Manager Reference: Describes the C API for communicating between client applications and provider modules.
• Sync Services Tutorial: Explains how to debug multiple syncing applications using the Syncrospector development tool.
• QuickTime Overview: Introduces the main concepts and services of QuickTime.
• QuickTime API Reference: Updated for QuickTime 7.
• Quartz 2D Reference: Describes the C API for the native two-dimensional drawing engine in Mac OS X.
• Process Manager Reference: Describes the C API for process management in Carbon applications.
• Multiprocessing Services Programming Guide: Explains how to implement preemptive tasks in Carbon applications.
• Core Endian Reference: Describes the C API for creating and installing callbacks to byte swap custom data.
• Cocoa-Java Integration Guide: Explains how to use the Java interfaces to Cocoa.

filed under CodingTips

Amit Singh provides an overview of the Mac OS X kernel as a Flash presentation. Worth a look, but wish it was plain old HTML with links into the ADC Darwin kernel documentation.

Slideshow: A Tour of the Mac OS X Kernel [Slashdot]

WED 6 JUL 2005

Technical Q&A's

filed under CodingTips

Technical Q&A QA1429 - Deprecated CALL_ON_[UN]LOAD pragmas Q: I'm trying to build an old project that used the CALL_ON_LOAD and CALL_ON_UNLOAD pragmas and I'm getting warnings that these pragmas are deprecated and that I should use constructor and destructor attributes instead. What are constructor and destructor attributes?

Technical Q&A QA1438 - Using the QuickTime DVCompressor properties Q: Can the kQTPropertyClass_DVCompressor properties only be used with a DV codec or do they also work with the DV export component?

Technical Q&A's [ADC]

TUE 5 JUL 2005

Porting Firefox to Intel Macs

filed under CodingTips

An overview of how Apple and the Firefox developers brought the popular web browser to the Intel Mac. Apple initially got Firefox running on the Intel Mac as a demo of porting a complex application. Learning from those Apple patches, Mozilla Foundation employee Josh Aas completed the port, and thinks that "for the first time in the history of Mac Mozilla products, we're actually ahead of the game".

Porting Firefox to Intel Macs [ZDNet]

Setting Key Bindings

filed under CodingTips

Clear explanation of how to override the system key bindings using your own ~/Library/KeyBindings XML file. Once in place, and with your Cocoa apps restarted, all good OS X citizen applications will take advantage of the new bindings.

Setting Key Bindings [MacroMates]

MON 4 JUL 2005

Technical Q&A QA1394 - Using NSSound with Core Audio on Mac OS 10.3.x

filed under CodingTips

Q: I am using NSSound with CoreAudio on Mac OS 10.3.x, why am I getting NULL data in my IOProc callback?

A: Some applications might find it useful to use Application Kit framework's NSSound and Core Audio within the same application. A developer must take notice that NSSound might interfere with Core Audio's HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) IOProc. (continued at ADC site)

Technical Q&A QA1394 - Using NSSound with Core Audio on Mac OS 10.3.x [ADC]

THU 30 JUN 2005

Low Printer Ink Tech Note

filed under CodingTips

Technical note at ADC on detecting IP printer supply levels using the command line tool snmpInk (10.4 and later). The XML-formatted data returned by snmpInk can be fed to a supply level Print Dialog Extension. Also covered is the creation of custom supply level tools in a printer driver, to override snmpInk.

Low Printer Ink Tech Note [Apple]

WED 29 JUN 2005

Chronos Switches to Cocoa

filed under CodingTips

Chronos discusses moving their flagship product StickyBrain to Cocoa in this article at ADC. Their transition from CodeWarrior and PowerPlant to Xcode and Cocoa occurred about two years ago and had the unexpected benefit of trivializing support for Intel Macs via Universal Binaries.

Chronos founder Jerry Halls describes the move to Cocoa as "pretty scary. It meant throwing away literally everything we had done. It was a hard year, but really we have a much better, more robust, more feature-rich product after one year of development - compared to the two or three years of work for the earlier versions." However, the effort was justified since sales of Cocoa-based StickyBrain 3 out-paced the prior version by a factor of four in the first six months following release.

Chronos Switches to Cocoa [ADC]

Sample Code from ADC

Quartz Composer and TSM Tech Notes

Wil Shipley: How To Succeed Writing Mac Software

Carbon Drawer Problem in 10.4/10.4.1

How To Handle Burnout

Mathematica's Support of 64-bit Addressing

Porting Multithreaded Apps from Win32 to Mac OS X

License Key Generation

Supporting Intel: Universal Binary Programming Guidelines