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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois
From: dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (AntiNeophilus)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Use of IM
Message-ID: <611@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 2-Dec-86 11:36:38 EST
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.611
Posted: Tue Dec  2 11:36:38 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 2-Dec-86 20:26:15 EST
References: <385@runx.OZ> <1366@hoptoad.uucp> <342@apple.UUCP> <4372@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Organization: Mundus Novum
Lines: 59

> In article <4372@ut-ngp.UUCP>, werner@ut-ngp.UUCP (Werner Uhrig) writes:
> when I first saw IM I threw it into a corner and decided that it was suicidal
> to even try to develop software based on "that mess" - anyone who did has
> my deepest admiration (and sympathies).  For many types of applications I
> suspect that it was nearly impossible to get things done without going beyond
> what IM told the developer about.  I think it is unfair to make it sound as
> if all developers had to do was to "follow the IM-guidelines", I suspect.
> 
> am I terribly off the track with such "heresy"?

I use the phonebook (i.e., outdated and incorrect in spots) version of
Inside Mac.  I have relied on it regularly in nearly all the work I
have done on the Macintosh and would be lost without it.  I also have
Mac Revealed, but only look at it when I can't find something in IM.
But I usually can't find it in MR, either.

Aside from such references, however, another valuable resource for
developing applications is source code from other existing
applications.  These are invaluable as an aid to figuring out
particular techniques.  Scroll bars, for instance, are much easier to
implement when you've seen how someone else does it, rather than trying
to do it from scratch.

Other concrete examples:
Grep-Wc read MacWrite files.  The code to do this is based directly on
Index (a Rascal program written at Reed College by the Rascal developers).
Without it, I would not have had the impetus to write Grep.
FakeAlert uses a technique from SimpleTools for constructing dialog
item lists in memory rather than getting them from a resource file.
The new release of TransSkel supports modeless dialogs, but only because
Dave Berry took the trouble to do it first and then had the kindness to
send me the changes.  I modified his code slightly, but let's face it:
modeless dialogs were a gaping lacuna in my comprehension of Macintosh
techniques.  If Dave hadn't bothered with them in TransSkel, I still
wouldn't know beans about them, and maybe you wouldn't be able to use
them so easily either (if you're a TransSkel user).

Some day I will grapple with printing.  When I do, I will go to
the Shebanow posting of the source for a printer program, and to the
print library source in the Rascal distribution.  When I write TransDraw,
I'll use Allen Weber's MacDraw->Imagen program as a guide.

It's considerations like these that account for my posting source to
most of the applications I post.  I *know* from the feedback I get
that it helps others, and I *know* others' programs help me.

One other point:  I just looked through the mod.mac.sources stuff
(I keep the articles), and lo!  Half the postings are mine.  This is
deplorable.  We can all benefit from *your* source code, but only if
you post it.  Or at least indicate, when posting the binary, whether
you'd be willing to mail the source to interested parties.

---
Paul DuBois     UUCP: {allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois    |
                ARPA: dubois@easter                               --+--
                      dubois@rhesus                                 |
                                                                    |
"What is lacking cannot be counted." - Solomon the cladist
                                       (Ecclesiastes 1:15)