Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!ucsd!ames!claris!apple!lsr
From: lsr@Apple.COM (Larry Rosenstein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Is MacApp C-compatible?
Message-ID: <14754@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 27 Jul 88 02:22:12 GMT
References: <333@apexepa.UUCP> <422@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU>
Reply-To: lsr@apple.apple.com.UUCP (Larry Rosenstein)
Organization: Advanced Technology Group, Apple Computer
Lines: 52

In article <422@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU> gandreas@ub.d.umn.edu.UUCP (Glenn Andreas) writes:
>In article <333@apexepa.UUCP> jcj@apexepa.UUCP (John Juback) writes:
>>I would like to find out if MacApp is compatible with MPW C.  APDA tells
>>me that MPW Pascal is required to run MacApp, yet the APDAlog describes
>>MacApp as a library, so shouldn't I be able to just link the MacApp
>>library with a C program?  Do I really need both Pascal and C compilers?
>
>First, I'm not the world's greatest authority on MacApp, I just use it (and
>love it!), but you can not use C with MacApp.  You need MPW Pascal.
>Period.  Here's why:

MPW supports bulding programs in any mixture of Pascal, C, and Assembler.  I
also think this is extended to include Modula-2 and FORTRAN, since 3rd
parties provide MPW-compatible compilers for those languages.

Any language that uses the MPW linker and run-time conventions can be linked
with a MacApp program.  This means you can use a FORTRAN or C routine inside
your MacApp program.

You still have to write some Object Pascal, however, because using MacApp
means you have to override some methods to implement your user interface.
MacApp places no restrictions on how you implement the internals of your
application, so they can be in C, Fortran, Assembler, etc.

The current version of MacApp is distributed as Object Pascal source, so you
need a compiler that can build it.  (Currently this means MPW Pascal or TML
Pascal II; eventually Lightspeed Pascal 2.0.)

>But, the good news is that MPW 3.0 with C++ is supposed to support all of
>this all by itself (or so I've heard - Duluth is a long way from where the

When MPW C++ is available (sometime in the fall), you will be able to write
a MacApp program entirely in C++ (with no Object Pascal).  You can make
subclasses of Object Pascal classes in C++ and vice versa.  (MacApp will
continue to be written in Object Pascal.)  Presumably, C++ programmers will
get a compiler version of MacApp, so they won't need to have a Pascal
compiler, but I don't know the details of this.

The current version of MacApp available from APDA is 1.1.1; in the very near
future a beta release of MacApp 2.0 will be available.  MacApp 2.1 will be
the version that supports C++.

You can send any other questions about MacApp to me.  (There is also a
mailing list macapp@Apple.COM which will the current MacApp engineers as
well.)



		 Larry Rosenstein,  Object Specialist
 Apple Computer, Inc.  20525 Mariani Ave, MS 46-B  Cupertino, CA 95014
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