Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site nsc.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!harvard!talcott!panda!genrad!decvax!tektronix!hplabs!amdahl!nsc!chuqui From: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) Newsgroups: net.micro.mac Subject: Macintosh Revealed, Vol II Message-ID: <3167@nsc.UUCP> Date: Sun, 22-Sep-85 15:12:33 EDT Article-I.D.: nsc.3167 Posted: Sun Sep 22 15:12:33 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 1-Oct-85 07:40:27 EDT Organization: Uncle Chuqui's Lemming Farm Lines: 34 Keywords: book review, good The second volume of Macintosh Revealed -- Programming with the Toolbox (by Stephen Chernicoff, Apple Press by the Hayden books people) is out. It is a big book (626 pages including index), and it attempts to tell you how to program the Macintosh. All of the examples are in Pascal, and Chernicoff ends up building a program called MiniEdit. I think he succeeds in doing what he set out to do -- writing a book that will allow you to do most of what you want to do to the Mac without having to plow through Inside Mac. He avoids certain special areas (device drivers, DA's, sound) to keep the technical level of the book tolerable. He is quite good at explaining rather detailed concepts to the technical novice without losing the heavyweight reader. It looks to me like you have enough information in these two books to do about 80% of the kinds of programming for the Mac you might want to do. For the rest, you would need IM, but I don't think you'll need it that often. If you've been waiting for Inside Mac, wait no longer -- this book has most of the information you'll get in IM, has it put together in an intelligent and accessible way, and is available now. Even if you find you need IM later, you'll probably end up using this book most of the time in your programming and only going to IM when you need the heavy details. One minor gripe: Chernicoff mentions the apple user interface standards on a number of occasions, but never really defines any of it. For someone who doesn't have access to IM, it will be hard to figure out how an application ought to look. It would have done everyone a service if he had taken some time (perhaps in an appendix) and summarized the user interface standards somewhere. Oh, well. -- Chuq Von Rospach nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA {decwrl,hplabs,ihnp4}!nsc!chuqui Take time to stop and count the ewoks...