Developers, take note: MacZoop, the free C++ framework for creating Mac applications, has been revved up to version 2.5 and added a Comprehensive Views architecture to facilitate the creation of complex user interfaces. Many new views classes have also been pre-built for creating those interfaces.
MacZoop 2.5 is fully Appearance Manager savvy and has a new dialog layer that’s completely built on views. The problematic Dialog Manager is no longer involved, according to MacTech magazine. The new version also boasts greater scalability to larger projects while retaining simplicity for small ones, MacZoop author Graham Cox said.
Fully Carbon compliant, MacZoop’s source will compile to classic 68K and Power PC, Carbon for Mac OS 8 and 9, and Mac OS X. The update also has built-in tooltip support, a new text class (all editing is now fully undoable), and a new list interface class. Many objects have been enhanced and “rationalized” without sacrificing code compatibility. Tabbed dialog interfaces can be built with one line of code. MacZoop is now MPW compliant right out of the box; it no longer requires changes to the code to use MPW. And the updated demo illustrates many of the new classes and features.
The SDK (software developer kit) is available for free, and free technical support is available via a mailing list. For more details and to download the latest version, visit the MacZoop Web site. To use MacZoop, you’ll need to obtain a modern C++ development environment and compiler. CodeWarrior Pro is recommended, but MPW or an earlier version of CodeWarrior also works.
Currently, the manual for MacZoop hasn’t been updated from version 2.1. This will follow as soon as time permits, but much of the information in the manual is still very much relevant to MacZoop 2.5, Cox said. There are supplementary documents pertaining to views, the new dialog architecture, and the views-based classes that are downloadable separately. Eventually they’ll be rolled into the main manual, but, for now, you’ll need to obtain them as a separate download.
Where the existing manual differs from the actuality in the code, the code is the canonical source of information, Cox adds. Virtually all of the source files have been recommented so that each method and function has a complete description of what it does and the various parameters it accepts and results it returns, he added. However, a lot of effort has been put into avoiding the gratuitous invalidation of documented methods and techniques, so the current manual, when read in conjunction with the supplementary documentation, will by and large be correct and give good results, Cox explained.