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From: mjm@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Michael McClennen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Getting started with Mac programming
Message-ID: <15913@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Date: 3 Oct 89 19:39:26 GMT
References: <7893@leadsv.UUCP> <11542@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM>
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Reply-To: mjm@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Michael McClennen)
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In article <11542@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM> dave@PRC.Unisys.COM
(David Lee Matuszek) writes:

>You *must* have Inside Mac.  There is no substitute.
>
>In my experience, the first volume contains 90% of what I need to
>know.  Most of the rest is in volume II, and I've hardly used III.
>Volumes IV and V are more relevant to the SE and the MacII, but I have
>only a lowly Mac+, so I haven't purchased them.  If you don't have a
>lot of $$, you might wish to postpone getting the later volumes; but
>sooner or later, you'll need them, so it's a matter of when to buy
>them, not whether to buy them.

True, volume I does contain a lot of what you need to know, but a few critical
managers (memory, file i/o) are documented in vol. II.  And the worst is yet
to come:

MUCH OF VOLUMES I AND II IS OBSOLETE!!!!  EVEN IF YOU ARE WORKING ON A MAC+!!!

In particular, the file manager chapter in volume II is worthless
and should be torn out of the book.  It documents the original flat Macintosh
File System.  All of the original macintoshes that used that system either have
been or should be upgraded or thrown on the junkheap.  The current file i/o
system is documented in Inside Macintosh volume IV.  In fact, volume IV was
written for the Macintosh Plus in particular.  Volume V covers both the SE and
the II, so you don't need it if you are sure that your software is never going
to run on either of those machines.  Volume III is indeed of not very much use,
but if you're going to buy I and II (which you still need, since many of the
basic managers (window, menu, quickdraw, etc.) are documented there and nowhere
else, and haven't changed much) you might as well buy that one too.

To summarize, you need to buy I-IV, and probably V as well.

In addition, quite a bit of all five volumes is obsolete, inaccurate, garbled,
or just plain wrong.  So you need to get ahold of a complete set of Macintosh
Technical Notes as well.  There are 253 of them at last count, and more come
out quarterly, including revisions to old ones.  They are sometimes wrong too,
but at least they do get updated once in a while.  (Oh, you can order them
from Apple through their developers' organization, called APDA.)

Michael McClennen (mjm@dartmouth.edu)
Dartmouth College Academic Computing