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From: herbw@midas.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: What makes programming the Mac difficult?
Message-ID: <1499@midas.TEK.COM>
Date: Tue, 9-Jun-87 16:01:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: midas.1499
Posted: Tue Jun  9 16:01:47 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Jun-87 01:54:49 EDT
References: <869@apple.UUCP>
Reply-To: herbw@midas.UUCP (Herb Weiner)
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR.
Lines: 52
Summary: Toolbox routines neglect to handle some common problems

--------

Ed, thanks for asking this question.  It shows that folks at Apple are interested.
In summary, I believe that there are a few common operations (things that every
application developer needs to deal with) that are not handled completely by
the toolbox routines:
 
1.  I want to put up a dialog with the default button highlighted.  The toolbox
    routine does almost everything.  I must provide my own code to highlight the

    button.  (Clue that this is difficult: so many applications simply neglect
    to highlight the default button.)
 
2.  I want to do a CopyBits of more than 3K bytes.  I must write a loop to do
    this.  Why couldn't the toolbox routine include a check for the 3K limit and

    automatically copy the picture in 3K chunks?  (Or better yet, check how
    much stack space is available, and optimize the copy for the size of the
    stack.)
 
3.  My desktop (file) has seen countless failed attempts (by public domain and
    shareware programs) to create custom icons for applications and documents.
    If the number of failures is any indication, this is the *most* difficult
    aspect of programming the Mac.  (It's easy once you know how :-) )  I believe
    a tool is in order here: Give it the application's signature and a list of
    file types with their corresponding icons, and it creates the *correct* BNDL

    and FREF resources.
 
4.  Writing custom routines to TrackControl (with different numbers of parameters
    for different situations).
 
5.  You asked us not to flame the documentation, so I won't.  I'll just say that

    doing *anything* with HFS is difficult, since I haven't deciphered it yet
    (fortunately, I've not had the need); and creating/playing back pictures
    (OpenPicture/DrawPicture) *directly to/from disk* was as much of a mystery
    adventure as a number of game programs.
 
I recognize that MacApp *might* solve some of these criticisms, but MacApp is
not a solution for everyone.  It certainly will not help me with the maintenance

of applications that I've already written.
 
Finally, I would like to point out that I would not have taken the time to offer

these constructive criticisms if I did not like my Mac.  Since I believe that
a program is not worth writing *unless* it's going to be friendly, the Mac is
the *easiest* computer I have ever programmed!
 
                                -- Herb Weiner (UUCP:      !tektronix!midas!herbw)
                                               (AppleLink: D0521)