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From: chuq@sun.uucp (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Using the Macintosh Toolbox with C (review)
Message-ID: <3021@sun.uucp>
Date: Fri, 22-Nov-85 13:02:32 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.3021
Posted: Fri Nov 22 13:02:32 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 24-Nov-85 06:45:51 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: Sun Micro -- NFS Consulting Group
Lines: 49

Are you programming the Macintosh with C? Are you tired of readings books and
trying to translate contructs like "foo^^baz.bar[buf]" into useful terms in
your head? Are you tired of having a stack of reference books on your desk
larger than the computer you're referencing?

Well, have I got a deal for you. It's called "Using the Macintosh Toolbox with
C", published by Sybex books ($22.95), 559 pages with 8 appendices and 13
chapters. 

This book tries to do a lot of things. It tries to act as a standalone
programming reference to the Mac. It tries to show you how to program the Mac.
It delves into a number of areas (such as scroll bars and glue routines) that
are very difficult to translate out of a Pascal reference (or are ignored
completely).

The authors (who are out there on the net somewhere) have put a lot of work
into translating the constructs and concepts of Inside Mac into C. The book is
written around Mac C by Consulair, but they've tried to avoid as much compiler
dependent material as possible, or to point at ways around it. For a book like
this, Mac C is probably the best compiler because it doesn't hide parts of the
system (as Megamax does with the pascal function type, for example). It is a
lot easier for a Megamax programmer to convert a glue routine to a pascal
procedure than the other way around.

The authors build their way, chapter by chapter, to a complete basic
application that includes DA's, text windows with full scrollbar capability,
filesystem hooks for reading and writing files, and multiple windows. In
comparing what they did with Chernicoff's book, they seem to have the same
information, a more complete application, and it doesn't have to be translated
out of Lisa Pascal. They also got it into one volume.

Source code is available on disk from the authors (three guys with computers
in Berkeley), or you can (of course) type it in from the book. They don't
have a single place where the entire application is listed, but it is built
piece by piece as you work through the chapters.

There are some things that are not covered in the book. Sound generation,
working with the printer, and writing desk accessories come immediately to
mind. I would have liked to see some reasonable code having to do with working
with the printer, but the others aren't really needed to deal with 'everyday'
applications. Beyond the lack of printer drivers, I really don't have any
gripes with the book. I definitely recommend it over any other book I've seen
on the market, including the Chernicoff pair and inside mac. If you program in
C, this is a must.
-- 
:From catacombs of Castle Tarot:        Chuq Von Rospach 
sun!chuq@decwrl.DEC.COM                 {hplabs,ihnp4,nsc,pyramid}!sun!chuq

Let us now take the sacred oath. As of now, he is no longer an elephant!