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From: pepke@loligo (Eric Pepke)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Getting started with Mac programming
Message-ID: <215@vsserv.scri.fsu.edu>
Date: 25 Sep 89 22:30:36 GMT
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Reply-To: pepke@loligo.UUCP (Eric Pepke)
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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.  

There is a lot of information in IV and V for Mac+'s, as well.  You should
have at least IV.  IMHO the most important things in IV are the List Manager
and the calls that let you open up a resource file read-only.  IV also has
the Hierarchical File System, but it is possible to write fully functional
applications without it.  For some strange reason, the pop-up and hierarchical
menu information is in V, but you can get that from other sources, such as
examples in the archives. 

The Inside Macintosh X-ref has a good list of global variables which you will
need before too long.

I would suggest that a programmer new to the Macintosh sit down and read at 
least these chapters before you start to write a program:

Inside Macintosh I- 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 20
Inside Macintosh II- 1

A lot of the packages interact in fundamental ways, and you have to get 
a feel for how an application hangs together before you can design one.

Next, sit down and write a skeleton.  Nothing fancy, just something that
can open up windows, pretend to open files of a certain type, support
desk accessories, ask the user whether to save changes, put up an About...
dialog, etc.  Once you have done a skeleton, you will have a much better 
feel for the flow of control in a Macintosh application.

Eric Pepke                                     INTERNET: pepke@gw.scri.fsu.edu
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute  MFENET:   pepke@fsu
Florida State University                       SPAN:     scri::pepke
Tallahassee, FL 32306-4052                     BITNET:   pepke@fsu

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