[Spadge]

Question about Appearance in OS X: I haven't yet sprung for the public release of OS X, still looking at the beta. I have a Carbon app that I'm bringing over from OS 9, but in the public beta of OS X the theme brushes, sounds, etc. don't show up. Is the public release full-featured -- i.e., theme compliant? The only theme brushes that appear to work in OSXPB are black and white. No sounds at all.

Thanks,

Spadge

[Since EBCDIC]

Well, that's certainly the $129 question ($99 with discount).

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

------------------
Since EBCDIC
Make every post count!

[Angus_D]

There are no theme sounds (I think that most people found them annoying and had them disabled, and Apple hasn't bothered to re-implement them - I have no idea if that's deliberate or if they just had more important things to do).

Could you explain what a theme brush is?

BTW, apps can tell whether the user is running in Aqua or Graphite (with the toned down UI widgets) by some calls, and they are sent a notification when the preference changes so they can adjust any custom UI widgets they might have.

Hope that helps.

[Spadge]

Thanks, Angus and EBCDIC.

In response to EBCDIC, it's really more than being the $129 question; it's whether or not one wishes to continue bothering with the new system in the first place. Spending time prepping your code for OS X Carbon and then seeing half of your UI blank out on you leads one to wonder whether the rush to get the fish to market left a few floundering on the pavement.

Angus, theme brushes are colors or patterns the Appearance Manager uses to draw UI elements. For example, setting the theme pen to kDialogBackgroundActive (from memory, but any theme brush constant will do) will draw what's next in that color/pattern. Since I had drawn certain elements in my app to resemble bevel buttons, it's kind of a drag to fire it up in OS X and see nothing but white, empty space. If the new public release of OS X doesn't show them either, then half the Appearance Manager API might just as well not exist.

Thanks again.

Spadge

[smeger]

There's a note in the headers saying that they _will_ be implemented, but haven't yet been. Trying to call the APIs gives an unimplemented system call error.

[Spadge]

Thanks, Smeger. No such animal in my <Appearance.h>, but I'm using the frameworks that came with the last available developer package (PB) outside of the retail OS X CD. My calls don't return any errors, but then I rather suspect the call SetThemePen() (among others) is supported but the constant passed as an argument isn't (in which case I thought it should perhaps return a bad parameter error). In any event, I'll just set the code aside until more illumination from Apple.

Thanks again.

Spadge

[aleph_null]

There're there. At least, the ones I've been using are there.

Lots of stuff has been in major flux on the Carbon side of things, and still is, to an extent. But Apple is dependent on Carbon to get the big boys (Adobe, Macromedia, etc) over to OS X, so they're devoting a lot of energy to it. The Appearance manager is the main entryway to Aqua for some of those guys, so it's a pretty big deal. It's unfortunate that is still seems like too little, too late, but oh well.

I would certainly reccommend upgrading to the public 1.0 release if you're doing any Carbon development. It's barely usable as it is -- at least, if you have to use Codewarrior -- but I couldn't fathom going back to one of the earlier builds...

[Angus_D]

Part of the problem is the various mishmash of different Universal Interfaces that are about. The current ones you should be using for Carbon development are included with the Carbon SDK, which is currently at around 1.3 pre-releases. You might need an ADC online account to access it, but they're free. See Apple's SDK page, and http://connect.apple.com/

[Spadge]

Yes, I'm an online member and I have the latest Carbon SDK. I'd like to create an updated Carbon frameworks for Project Builder, but coming from CodeWarrior I have to figure it out first...

Thanks,

Spadge

[aleph_null]

Originally posted by Spadge:
Yes, I'm an online member and I have the latest Carbon SDK. I'd like to create an updated Carbon frameworks for Project Builder, but coming from CodeWarrior I have to figure it out first...

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but the source for the Carbon.framework is private, and undoubtedly depends on CoreFoundation and other stuff which is also private. Probably the only way to get the latest implementation of Carbon on X is to get the retail X package.

[Spadge]

Just an update...

Splurged for OS X retail and tried the Appearance stuff in Project Builder. I get the theme brushes but still no theme sounds. Half a fish is better than none. I'll kind of expect theme sound implementation in a future update of OS X. In the meantime, first impressions of OS X: everything looks great (PPPoE is particularly welcome).

Thanks to all,

Spadge

[Angus_D]

Theme sounds just aren't there, full stop. There's been a long discussion of this in OS X - General Discussion.