July 93 - Editor's Notes
Editor's Notes
Mary Elaine Califf
With the wealth of books currently available about C++ and object-oriented programming, it's sometimes difficult to determine which are worth buying.
Those who want to know more about James Coplien's Advanced C++ should see Eric Rose's review of the book.
Most of you have heard by now of NeoAccess™, the object-oriented database component from NeoLogic Systems. If your reaction to the product is, "That sounds great, but it's overkill for me," there is now NeoPersist™. NeoPersist provides object persistence for up to five classes in applications which don't require extensive database capabilities.
Introduction To . . .
In this issue we continue the current theme of introducing object-oriented languages and development systems. Steve Mann finishes up his series on BETA with a presentation of the libraries provided with the system. Steve Wilson provides us with a technical overview of QuickApp, the small application framework that inspired quite a bit of interest at MADACON this year when shown in beta. QuickApp is now available in a final release.
Kurt Schmucker introduces us to the Serius Workshop environment. Serius is a visual programming environment which allows its user to glue together pre-fabricated objects. Kurt shows how he has implemented some of the MacApp sample programs using Serius.
Another technical overview gives a more thorough look at a product you have probably heard of already. Gary Odom describes Electron Mining's OOPC in some more complete detail than has yet appeared here.
And Technical Articles…
We have several technical articles this issue for MacApp and other environments. On the non-MacApp side, Michael Maciag shows a great deal about Component Workshop's strengths and weaknesses by taking us through his implementation of the IconEdit tutorial in Component Workshop. Ed Draper describes the implementation of PICT import and export in OOPC.
As usual we have plenty of help with MacApp. Those who follow MACAPP3TECH$ may have noticed that Angelika Peters was finding a lot of bugs related to TView::AsPict() a little while back. In her article she describes what she was using AsPict() for as well as the various bugs and possible fixes.
As a followup to the review of Inside Out 2.0 in May, Jesse Feiler gives some tips on using Inside Out with MacApp, discussing where to fit the database into the class hierarchy and how some things might work differently in the MacApp environment.
Finally, some of you may have kept up with comments from Ken Ryall and Bo Klintberg on their incorporation of the object model and handling AppleScript into MacApp. Ken has an article in this issue describing MAScript, his set of changes to MacApp for scripting, and how to use it. Bo has promised an article for a future issue describing his approach, which does not involve changes to MacApp.
Writers Wanted
As always, FrameWorks is interested in articles from you. We publish reviews of software and books that would be helpful to object-oriented programmers, introductory articles on languages, development environments and development tools, and technical articles that describe interesting classes or give useful tips. If you have an idea for an article, please contact me at one of the addresses above or on the masthead.
