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From: dtw@F.GP.CS.CMU.EDU (Duane Williams)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: TransSkell (was Re: Beginning Mac Programming)
Message-ID: <995@PT.CS.CMU.EDU>
Date: 29 Feb 88 03:08:01 GMT
References: <104700005@uiucdcsp> <978@PT.CS.CMU.EDU> <2694@zodiac.UUCP> <43449@sun.uucp>
Sender: netnews@PT.CS.CMU.EDU
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Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 25
Keywords: Transkel and starting programming on the MAC


In message <43449@sun.uucp>, Chuq Von Rospach says the following about
Paul DuBois' TransSkel package:
| This is really nice. It's not quite an object oriented system, but it's
| close. It hides all the grotty code from you, and lets you worry more about
| the application (rather than trying to hack the applicaiton into the
| skeleton without breaking things). It protects you from the Mac's
| programming interface.

Now I am a big fan of TransSkel, but the above description is a gross
exaggeration.  TransSkel automatically handles only the most basic aspects
of the standard Mac event loop, the easiest part of a Mac program to figure
out.  It does DAs automatically, but that's almost as trivial to do as
Chuq's trivial example program.  As soon as you try doing something non-
trivial, you can't avoid learning about the Mac's programming interface.
TransSkel is useful, but it's no panacea.  It is also NOT close to being
object oriented.  (And you're living in an Other World if you seriously
think you can avoid dealing with the TransSkel source.)

One could easily write a cover package for TransSkel, that would be larger
as TransSkel itself, to implement features of the standard Mac interface
that TransSkel doesn't handle.

Duane Williams
dtw@cs.cmu.edu