[booboo]

How easy is it to write GUI front-ends for Terminal app's...or how difficult... and where would one begin?

Any pointers for a dumb musician with a very limited grasp of C, and fairly extensive FileMaker development experience gladly accepted...

[int69h]

It's all relative man. This task would probably be trivial for me, but I suspect it will be a challenge for you. Not impossible, just challenging.

1) Read the Temperature Converter tutorial provided by Apple until you understand what's going on.

2) Go read the documentation for NSTask in the Foundation documentation.

3) Get to work on writing your wrapper.

4) Send me a free copy for providing you with such good advice.

This project will be FAR easier to accomplish if the command line application you want to write a wrapper for is not interactive.

Any chance of getting some specifics on your project? What do you intend to write a wrapper for?

Good luck.

[VValdo]

Originally posted by booboo:
How easy is it to write GUI front-ends for Terminal app's...or how difficult... and where would one begin?

Any pointers for a dumb musician with a very limited grasp of C, and fairly extensive FileMaker development experience gladly accepted...

It's way easy. You need three things:

1. The developer tools installed in OS X
2. This Link
3. And this Link

Read the very comprehensive and excellent docs included with the developer tools to understand Cocoa and the Project Builder (there's even a great tutorial on how object oriented programming works in general) so you know how to build an interface for your terminal app (it's mostly drag & drop + linking stuff together).

Then stop by your local bookstore and pick up "the book" which will help you walk through the process...

If you need to run something with root privs, it's a little harder because you have to deal with the Security Framework and ask the user for their root password, etc. It's a different process than using NSTask.

Finally, I highly recommend Cocoa Dev Central. They have some great tutorials that teach you the basics.

There's also this amazing mailing list where you can search for almost any question, and it's already been asked and answered.

I'm sure others have good suggestions, but I'm a total beginner myself and have found the resources online + that book REALLY helpful. Writing a UI wrapper for a terminal program isn't a bad way to start.

Good luck,
W

[booboo]

many thanks for your replies. I'll report back and let you know how I get on...

As for more specifics, it was a general enquiry, but I've a definite interest in Apple's Audio Unit effects....