MacOSX version of Scribus

On the Scribus mailing list, Andreas Vox has started an interesting discussion on bringing Scribus natively to Mac OSX. Join in with your opinion!

http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/pipermail/scribus/2005-March/009442.html

I noticed that you still require X11 for the MacOSX version of Scribus.

I managed to compile Scribus 1.2.1 with Qt/Mac native and I wondered if you'd like to get some hints how it is done. In fact it was quite easy once I solved my libtool problems (screenshot attached :-) )

So this is what I did:

0. Started with the Scribus 1.2.1 sources

1. configured Scribus to use Qt/Mac inbstead of the fink Qt version

2. replaced all gdk-* sourcefiles with empty files

3. commented out all #include  etc.

4. Removed GC from scpainter

5. Rewrote scpainter::end:

void ScPainter::end {        QImage qimg(m_width, m_height, 32, QImage::BigEndian); QRgb * bits = (QRgb *) qimg.bits; int words = qimg.numBytes / 4; art_u8 * p = m_buffer;; for (int i=0; i < words; ++i) { art_u8 r = *p++; art_u8 g = *p++; art_u8 b = *p++; art_u8 a = *p++; *bits++ = qRgba(r,g,b,a); }        bitBlt(m_target, 0, 0, &qimg); }

6. libtool nuisances:

6a) Apply fink patch to use correct -bundle for libtool

6b) Remove -s option (stripping is no good idea if you want to link plugins)

7. Make Scribus ignore any "-psn_*" commandline options passed by Qt

8. Adjust a few #includes to MacOSX

9. Created a rudimentary Scribus.app/ bundle (thanks to Ronald Florence who did the same for LyX so I just had to replace a few strings)

The application still uses the files (plugins etc.) which Scribus installs to /usr/local. The following libraries get linked:

/Applications/local/Scribus.app/Contents/MacOS/scribus: /sw/lib/libjpeg.62.dylib (compatibility version 63.0.0, current version 63.0.0) /sw/lib/libart_lgpl_2.2.dylib (compatibility version 6.0.0, current version 6.16.0) /usr/local/lib/libfreetype6.dylib (compatibility version 6.2.0, current version 6.3.4) /usr/lib/libcups.2.dylib (compatibility version 2.0.0, current version 2.5.0) /usr/lib/libssl.0.9.7.dylib (compatibility version 0.9.7, current version 0.9.7) /usr/lib/libcrypto.0.9.7.dylib (compatibility version 0.9.7, current version 0.9.7) /sw/lib/liblcms.1.dylib (compatibility version 2.0.0, current version 2.12.0) /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 71.1.1) /sw/lib/libtiff.3.dylib (compatibility version 3.6.0, current version 3.6.1) libqt-mt.3.dylib (compatibility version 3.3.0, current version 3.3.3) /sw/lib/libpng.3.dylib (compatibility version 3.0.0, current version 3.0.0) /usr/lib/libz.1.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)

I still have problems with some plugins and some icons don't show, but otherwise it's usable. Anyone who want's to test and help finishing it to a proper MacOSX application?

Regards Andreas

Ah, yes, the screenshot:

http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/pipermail/scribus/attachments/20050305/a9711066/scribus-screen-shot-small-0001.jpg

http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/pipermail/scribus/2005-March/009443.html

http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/pipermail/scribus/2005-March/009444.html

Looks great.. erm.. what replaces the gdk sources then?

and what replaces the X call(s) in scfonts.cpp ? Does this mean you always have to add in the font paths via the additional font paths setup?

Craig

http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/pipermail/scribus/2005-March/009447.html

This does seem extremely interesting. I've been meaning to try an Aqua- native port of 1.3cvs for a while, but I just don't have the mac development experience, and there was the gdk-pixbuf issue to consider.

Like Craig Bradney, I'd be very interested in knowing how you handled fonts and how you worked around the gdk dependencies.

From what I see in your library list below, I see that you still link to quite a few fink-supplied libraries. I imagine we'd have to ship prebuilt copies of those, or statically link them, with any "installable" Aqua Scribus build. Sound about right?

 9. Created a rudimentary Scribus.app/ bundle (thanks to Ronald Florence who did the same for LyX so I just had to replace a few strings)

That's very, very useful to know.

Did you end up using Xcode for all this, or just tweaked the existing build to use Qt/Aqua?

/sw/lib/libjpeg.62.dylib (compatibility version 63.0.0, current version 63.0.0)

Does MacOS X not provide libjpeg? That's from fink by the looks...

/sw/lib/libart_lgpl_2.2.dylib (compatibility version 6.0.0, current version 6.16.0)

I imagine we'd have to bundle or statically link libart.

/usr/local/lib/libfreetype6.dylib (compatibility version 6.2.0, current version 6.3.4)

''/usr/local/lib. Interesting. Did you compile a Mac-native version of freetype yourself, or use an installer package or something?''

/usr/lib/libcups.2.dylib (compatibility version 2.0.0, current version 2.5.0)

Glad to see we can rely on MacOS/X for CUPS libraries.

/usr/lib/libssl.0.9.7.dylib (compatibility version 0.9.7, current version 0.9.7)

/usr/lib/libcrypto.0.9.7.dylib (compatibility version 0.9.7, current version 0.9.7)

/sw/lib/liblcms.1.dylib (compatibility version 2.0.0, current version 2.12.0)

Fink again. I guess that'd be another static linking candidate.

/usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 71.1.1)

Is this MacOS/X's libc equivalent? Or does it provide the core Aqua routines etc?

/sw/lib/libtiff.3.dylib (compatibility version 3.6.0, current version 3.6.1)

Hmm, you got libtiff from fink too. Again, I'm rather surprised OS/X doesn't include that.

libqt-mt.3.dylib (compatibility version 3.3.0, current version 3.3.3)

/sw/lib/libpng.3.dylib (compatibility version 3.0.0, current version 3.0.0)

libpng from fink too :-(

Anyone who want's to test and help finishing it to a proper MacOSX application?

Me!

Especially if you can give some more detailed info, especially about how you did the build and where the various libraries are from.

One thing I'm curious about... I know MacOS/X has five different major APIs:

Carbon        (Cleaned up OS/9) Classic       (Virtual OS/9 for unchanged apps) Cocoa         (Native MacOS/X Objective C/Aqua) Java          (duh!) POSIX/BSD/X11 (unix-style apps, usually console or X11 based)

but I was always under the impression they were rather separate, and one couldn't for example write a POSIX/BSD app that used Cocoa (Aqua) graphics. I also thought Cocoa apps had to link to 'Libraries' and 'Frameworks' that were different from the POSIX/BSD style shared libraries.

Do you know if this distinction is less strict than I thought, and one can mix and match to an extent? Or is Qt doing some magic to protect us from these issues? Can we do things like use the MacOS/X font APIs? Have you built Scribus as a Cocoa application, a POSIX/BSD app, or some hybrid of the two?

If you know where I can go to find out more about MacOS/X development and porting from UNIX, that'd be really handy too...

(It's funny - I don't actually like macs. But I still want to help port Scribus across.)

-- Craig Ringer

http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/pipermail/scribus/2005-March/009448.html

On Sat, 2005-03-05 at 09:41 +0100, Craig Bradney wrote:

''and what replaces the X call(s) in scfonts.cpp ? Does this mean you always have to add in the font paths via the additional font paths setup?''

I expect fontconfig, as used in 1.3, should work fine for this job. It probably won't permit the use of MacOS9 style resource-fork-based fonts (PostScript / Type 1 and TrueType) or OS/X native style .dfont fonts, though.

I'm rather more curious about what replaced gdk-* and the more general issues with how it all works, though.

-- Craig Ringer

http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/pipermail/scribus/2005-March/009452.html

Please sign me up for the porting/testing effort for the native Aqua Scribus. I spent months last year trying to get it to build. Alas, I don't know C++ at all, and always had to stop when I ran into the screenpaint/X11 calls: just didn't know how to work around them.

I've gotten pretty knowledgable about building and deploying app bundles from Qt, however: I'm comfortable with Qt/Mac from a build standpoint, so I think I can help there.

It may not be possible to have the ideal binary distribution, which is a ~ standalone, drag-and-drop app bundle. One can do that if you compile Qt to be statically linked, rather than dynamically linked. However, I know Scribus has other external dependencies as well. Still, if Scribus can be built against a static Qt, then it should be simple to isolate the other external dependencies (libtif? etc.) into a Mac pkg installer. A standard Mac user in Scribus' target market (publishing, graphics) isn't going to want to install all of Qt just to run Scribus, even if you provide a binary installer (I maintain PyQt for the Mac with a binary installer, so I have some insight here).

The example of Gimp.app (a Mac app bundle of Gimp 2.2.x) is instructive here: it's become wildly popular in terms of downloads because it wraps all the Gimp binaries and GTK libraries into a single app bundle. Its only external dependency is Apple's X11 environment.

One area where we'd have to tread carefully is if the Scribus build links to Fink libraries. That complicates matters, for several reasons. One, the goal should be to make Scribus as standalone/isolated as possible; I don't think that requiring a separate installation of Fink should be part of this. Also, the Fink leaders are serious about enforcing GPL on their packages: I was warned last year when I asked about making an X11 app bundle of Scribus that I'd have to carefully document all my steps, make all my source code available, etc. I decided all that was too complex for me to undertake by myself. If Fink winds up being part of this equation, then I just want to highlight the due diligence that would need to be taken. Perhaps Martin can provide advice on this front.

Another question: where should this project be hosted? My little AquaScribus app launcher is available from the Scribus site, as well as from my own server, but it's a very small download. Depending on the libraries, a Mac pkg installer of Scribus could be 20-50 megabytes to download. Can the Scribus servers in the UK handle this, or should a Sourceforge project be set up for the back end?

I'm incredibly excited about this: I've been wanting to ditch my Microsoft/Adobe toolchain in my publishing business (I publish about 50 poetry books per year via POD) for some time, but Scribus hasn't been quite mature enough for my needs. (I have used it successfully with cover design only, so I know that Scribus can handle commercial work, but those covers were more work than a comparable version in InDesign would be.) With 1.2.1 supporting styled text import, it looks like Scribus may have crossed that threshold. And with NeoOffice J running natively on the Mac, that and Scribus.app would allow me to ditch X11 for everything except Gimp.

So, just let me know what I need to do! I can't wait!

- -- Cheers,

Kevin Walzer, PhD

http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/pipermail/scribus/2005-March/009460.html

Kevin Walzer wrote:

 The example of Gimp.app (a Mac app bundle of Gimp 2.2.x) is instructive here: it's become wildly popular in terms of downloads because it wraps all the Gimp binaries and GTK libraries into a single app bundle. Its only external dependency is Apple's X11 environment. 

Gimp.app uses a whole bunch of dynamic libraries from Fink. It just puts them into the bundle and ships them with the app. Scribus.app could do the same, at least for the smaller libs. I agree that libqt is perhaps better linked statically if possible.

 One area where we'd have to tread carefully is if the Scribus build links to Fink libraries. That complicates matters, for several reasons. One, the goal should be to make Scribus as standalone/isolated as possible; I don't think that requiring a separate installation of Fink should be part of this. Also, the Fink leaders are serious about enforcing GPL on their packages: I was warned last year when I asked about making an X11 app bundle of Scribus that I'd have to carefully document all my steps, make all my source code available, etc. I decided all that was too complex for me to undertake by myself. If Fink winds up being part of this equation, then I just want to highlight the due diligence that would need to be taken. Perhaps Martin can provide advice on this front. 

Actually I even annoyed the guy who distributes Gimp.app until he provided a detailed account of his build procedure. He has such a text now on his web site at http://gimp-app.sourceforge.net/gimp.app.howto.txt, and I think this is a good thing. It can be useful for example for a project like Scribus.app. That's is the idea of this part of the GPL, namely to allow others to learn from your work.

I don't see any conflict between Fink and a possible standalone Scribus.app. I could even imagine a Fink package that produces this standalone Scribus.app which could then be distributed from the scribus servers. Just because such a thing has not yet been done, doesn't mean it is impossible.

There is another example of a Mac app bundle made with the help of Fink: Nicotine.app http://nicotine-app.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl. The maintainer of this project (vasi) is also one of the main Fink developers. On that page there are even two more app bundles made in the same way. All these app bundles are running with X11, though.

''So, just let me know what I need to do! I can't wait!''

The first and foremost point is to get this thing working.

All other questions about packaging etc are secondary. You remember that Ben Reed had a scribus version using Qt/Mac already some 2 years ago, but it never worked correctly. Maybe both Qt/Mac and scribus are now in a shape that makes this possible, but this has to be seen.

-- Martin

http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/pipermail/scribus/2005-March/009478.html

Craig Ringer wrote:

 This does seem extremely interesting. I've been meaning to try an Aqua- native port of 1.3cvs for a while, but I just don't have the mac development experience, and there was the gdk-pixbuf issue to consider. 

Since this post appears to contain more questions than others I'll respond to this :-)

 Like Craig Bradney, I'd be very interested in knowing how you handled fonts and how you worked around the gdk dependencies. 

Ok, short one first: Fonts. I just commented out the body of addXFontpath. Currently I only have Courier/Luxi/Utopia etc from /usr/X11R6/bin. Some work needs to be done here.

About the gdk-pixmap business: my first step was to delete/comment out anything which uses X11. I have a native LyX version based on Qt/Mac, so I know this is possible. Unfortunately when I started Scribus the main drawing area was black.

Then I looked at the code and saw that in ScPainter::end the libart buffer is just copied to an X pixmap. I then tried QImage for this: QImage qimg(m_buffer, m_width, m_height, 0, 0); bitBlt(target, 0, 0, &qimg);

That worked but after a while I noticed the colors where wrong. Some testing and thinking revealed that libart uses RGBA, while Qt uses ARGB. That's how I arrived at the current code: just copy the libart buffer into a QImage manually.

The gdk-sources are not needed at all, QImage/bitBlt do all the work. This should also work for other platforms btw. I'm not sure if scrolling is as fast as in X11, but it feels ok. Sometimes I see artefacts of half-drawn screens while scrolling, but once I stop everything looks ok.

 From what I see in your library list below, I see that you still link to quite a few fink-supplied libraries. I imagine we'd have to ship prebuilt copies of those, or statically link them, with any "installable" Aqua Scribus build. Sound about right? 

That was my quick&dirty approach again. It was easier for me to use fink.

 Did you end up using Xcode for all this, or just tweaked the existing build to use Qt/Aqua? 

No XCode, not even Eclipse. Just Developertools gcc 3.3.3, Terminal.app and vi :-) The app-bundle is just a bunch of files where you have to copy your executable to the right position and provide some information in an XML- based Info.plist file. I haven't produced icons yet, I will use the XCode tool for that.

''Does MacOS X not provide libjpeg? That's from fink by the looks...''

Yes. Couldn't find one in OSX.

I imagine we'd have to bundle or statically link libart.

Yes, unless you replace it by Cairo before ;-)

Did you compile a Mac-native version of freetype yourself, or use an installer package or something?

I installed the fink one but obviously configure found the one from X11.

 > /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 71.1.1)

Is this MacOS/X's libc equivalent? Or does it provide the core Aquaroutines etc? 

Yes, libc, libm and others.

 > /sw/lib/libtiff.3.dylib (compatibility version 3.6.0, current version 3.6.1)

Hmm, you got libtiff from fink too. Again, I'm rather surprised OS/X doesn't include that. </i>

I guess Apple needs Objective C routines for image handling most of the time, so they have equivalents in their Cocoa framework.

Especially if you can give some more detailed info, especially about how you did the build and where the various libraries are from.

Maybe we can stick to the fink ones for the time beeing and get the other stuff right, first?

>One thing I'm curious about... I know MacOS/X has five different major APIs:

>        Carbon         (Cleaned up OS/9)

>        Classic        (Virtual OS/9 for unchanged apps) Emulator.

>        Cocoa          (Native MacOS/X Objective C/Aqua)

Objective C framework from Nextstep

>        Java           (duh!)

Has Cocoa bindings.

>        POSIX/BSD/X11  (unix-style apps, usually console or X11 based)

Can be mixed with Carbon. I think X11 and Qt/Mac are also based on Carbon.

It's all layered. I guess all graphics eventually end up in the Quartz library. For a single application it is very advisable to stick to one framework, though.

> but I was always under the impression they were rather separate, and > one > couldn't for example write a POSIX/BSD app that used Cocoa (Aqua) > graphics. I also thought Cocoa apps had to link to 'Libraries' and > 'Frameworks' that were different from the POSIX/BSD style shared > libraries. > > Do you know if this distinction is less strict than I thought, and one > can mix and match to an extent? Or is Qt doing some magic to protect us > from these issues? Can we do things like use the MacOS/X font APIs? > Have > you built Scribus as a Cocoa application, a POSIX/BSD app, or some > hybrid of the two?

Qt/Mac app :-) You can link to any framework you want, so now Scribus links to Posix/BSD for non-graphics stuff and Qt/Mac and libart for graphics. Cocoa is more difficult because that's Objective C.

Scribus already almost exclusively uses Qt for graphics. The buffer-copy in scpainter and the fontpaths are the only X11 dependencies as far as I know.

> If you know where I can go to find out more about MacOS/X development > and porting from UNIX, that'd be really handy too...

There are developer docs but mainly you can just use gcc/gdb/make etc. You just have to read the Apple specific manpages for these tools, eg. the special linking options of gcc for Darwin, -framework instead of -I, or the fact that you can call gdb on a Mac.app application directly.

OK, the next steps would be:


 * decide if we want to work with 1.2.1 or 1.3cvs
 * fix the makefile for MacOSX (include the fink changes)
 * the fontpath issue
 * use dynamic paths to access Scribus.app/Contents/Resources instead of /usr/local/lib/scribus (We can build on some LyX work for that)
 * Provide a howto to compile Scribus for MacOS native (req. libraries, configure options, installation, ...)
 * Test Scribus/Mac for regression wrt. Scribus/X11
 * When this works try to get a self contained binary with bundled/static libs.

Ciao

/Andreas

http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/pipermail/scribus/2005-March/009466.html On Sat, 2005-03-05 at 20:49 +0100, Craig Bradney wrote:

> Sure its possible. In the worst case we can just supply all the libraries > ourselves. Not very disk space friendly but once the X dependency is really > gone it might not be that much really.

I think it'd be best to bundle or statically link all libs not included in MacOS/X as shipped, if at all possible. Mac users seem happy to accept somewhat bloated apps in exchange for standalone installs, and this is probably something that should be taken into account.

It's probably not a big deal whether they're bundled as separate libs or statically linked thanks to the Mac `.app' dir setup that lets you collect up all files for an app into an "object" that behaves to the user as it if was a single program binary.

-- Craig Ringer

http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/pipermail/scribus/2005-March/009480.html

> OK, the next steps would be: > > * decide if we want to work with 1.2.1 or 1.3cvs

I'd suggest 1.3 as we arent adding any new features to 1.2.1. 1.2.x works already on Mac. Ok its not so simple or pretty

> * fix the makefile for MacOSX (include the fink changes) > * the fontpath issue

1.3 supports fontconfig.. I'm assuming fontconfig is ok via Fink. We will strip the X dependency from 1.3 and rely on fontconfig soon enough.

We have a cairo build now, have had for ages, but its not fast enough to switch yet. Your QImage idea might work on X11 just as quickly as libart though..

Craig

http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/pipermail/scribus/2005-March/009482.html

Two small remarks:

Andreas Vox wrote: [] >> >         /usr/local/lib/libfreetype6.dylib (compatibility version >> 6.2.0, >> > current version 6.3.4) >> >> /usr/local/lib. Interesting. Did you compile a Mac-native version of >> freetype yourself, or use an installer package or something? > > > I installed the fink one but obviously configure found the one from X11.

Actually, it found yet another one. The freetype from current Apple X11 is version 2.1.0 which is too old to work for scribus. Fink has versions 2.1.4 and 2.1.9, but they show other compatibility versions than what you are showing.

>> >         /usr/lib/libcups.2.dylib (compatibility version 2.0.0, current >> > version 2.5.0) >> >> Glad to see we can rely on MacOS/X for CUPS libraries.

But headers like <cups/cups.h> are not supplied by Apple. You need a small package cups-dev from Fink (or wait 4 months for MacOSX 10.4). [] > * decide if we want to work with 1.2.1 or 1.3cvs

It is probably natural for scribus developers to eye 1.3x here, and I would agree if this means that 1.3x will be cleaned up for the Mac. Right now, I haven't yet got it working correctly.

- There is a bug in the prefs plugin that prevents the preferences dialog from coming up, but it is not the same bug as the one in 1.2.1, and I haven't yet identified it. There is another bug in the svgex plugin, but this is less important than the preferences.

- The colors are all wrong, again. I don't know which version of David Purton's patch went into the cvs sources, but the result looks like with the first version of his patch which was not correct for bigendian machines.

-- Martin

http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/pipermail/scribus/2005-March/009483.html

Martin wrote:

> Two small remarks: > > Andreas Vox wrote: > [] > >> >         /usr/local/lib/libfreetype6.dylib (compatibility version > >> 6.2.0, > >> > current version 6.3.4) > >> > >> /usr/local/lib. Interesting. Did you compile a Mac-native version > of > >> freetype yourself, or use an installer package or something? > > > > > > I installed the fink one but obviously configure found the one from > X11. > > Actually, it found yet another one.

You are right. Courtesy of word2x / libwmf.

... > It is probably natural for scribus developers to eye 1.3x here,

Fine. I'll start with patching now :-)

> and I > would agree if this means that 1.3x will be cleaned up for the Mac. > Right now, I haven't yet got it working correctly. > > - There is a bug in the prefs plugin that prevents the preferences > dialog from coming up, but it is not the same bug as the one in 1.2.1, > and I haven't yet identified it. There is another bug in the svgex > plugin, but this is less important than the preferences. > > - The colors are all wrong, again. I don't know which version of David > Purton's patch went into the cvs sources, but the result looks like > with > the first version of his patch which was not correct for bigendian > machines.

This is Scribus/X11, yes? Is David Purton's patch changing the gdk-sources or libart or something else?

Ciao /Andreas

http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/pipermail/scribus/2005-March/009484.html

On Sat, 2005-03-05 at 19:18 +0100, Andreas Vox wrote:

> Ok, short one first: Fonts. I just commented out the body of > addXFontpath. Currently I only have Courier/Luxi/Utopia etc > from /usr/X11R6/bin. Some work needs to be done here.

Fontconfig should take care of that for now. In the medium term I'd like to look at trying to access fonts via the MacOS/X font apis ... but that might require things like a carbonized version of freetype that knows about resource forks.

> No XCode, not even Eclipse. Just Developertools gcc 3.3.3, > Terminal.app and vi :-) The app-bundle is just a bunch of files where > you have to copy your executable to the right position and provide > some information in an XML-based Info.plist file. I haven't produced > icons yet, I will use the XCode tool for that.

That's very useful to know.

> > Especially if you can give some more detailed info, especially about > > how > > you did the build and where the various libraries are from. > > Maybe we can stick to the fink ones for the time beeing and get the > other stuff right, first?

That sounds sensible.

> >        POSIX/BSD/X11  (unix-style apps, usually console or X11 based) > Can be mixed with Carbon. I think X11 and Qt/Mac are also based on > Carbon.

Thankyou. I wasn't aware POSIX/BSD apps could use Carbon ... that's extremely handy to know. It also eliminates one of my biggest concerns with a Mac native port - the ability to use Mac-native APIs for font access, accessing color profiles, etc without having to do some sort of Objective-C wrapper layer.

> > If you know where I can go to find out more about MacOS/X development > > and porting from UNIX, that'd be really handy too... > > There are developer docs but mainly you can just use gcc/gdb/make etc. > You just have to read the Apple specific manpages for these tools, eg. > the special linking options of gcc for Darwin, -framework instead of -I, > or the fact that you can call gdb on a Mac.app application directly.

Good to know. I was more hoping for a "survial guide for UNIX developers" though, ie what's different, how to handle issues like resource forks, .app bundles, the number of different APIs, etc. I'll have to check out the main dev docs - I had a quick look before but didn't spot any sort of summary for folks coming from a *nix background.

> You should know that MacOSX is the most popular Unix on earth :-)

I just wish they'd integrate X11 more, so it wasn't the most popular UNIX-like OS on earth and the only workstation one that encourages users to avoid X11 ;-)

I like my network transparency.

> * decide if we want to work with 1.2.1 or 1.3cvs

I tend to agree with MrB re using 1.3cvs. While it'd mean a longer lead time to get a stable, usable build, and more changes happening along the way, it should mean less duplicated work and merging.

I guess I'll have to finish getting XCode and the dev tools set up on the eMac at work.

-- Craig Ringer

http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/pipermail/scribus/2005-March/009485.html

Craig Ringer wrote: > In the medium term I'd like > to look at trying to access fonts via the MacOS/X font apis ... but > that > might require things like a carbonized version of freetype that knows > about resource forks.

AFAIK resource forks are deprecated in MacOSX.

> Thankyou. I wasn't aware POSIX/BSD apps could use Carbon ... that's > extremely handy to know. It also eliminates one of my biggest concerns > with a Mac native port - the ability to use Mac-native APIs for font > access, accessing color profiles, etc without having to do some sort of > Objective-C wrapper layer.

That's why they created Carbon in the first place :-) -- noone wanted to switch to Objective C.

> > > If you know where I can go to find out more about MacOS/X > development > > > and porting from UNIX, that'd be really handy too... > > > > There are developer docs but mainly you can just use gcc/gdb/make > etc. > > You just have to read the Apple specific manpages for these tools, > eg. > > the special linking options of gcc for Darwin, -framework instead of > -I, > > or the fact that you can call gdb on a Mac.app application directly. > > Good to know. I was more hoping for a "survial guide for UNIX > developers" though, ie what's different, how to handle issues like > resource forks, .app bundles, the number of different APIs, etc. I'll > have to check out the main dev docs - I had a quick look before but > didn't spot any sort of summary for folks coming from a *nix > background.

Look for Unix porting guide. Manpages for gcc, glibtool, otool, etc.

I also found

http://sveinbjorn.vefsyn.is/writings and

http://kernelthread.com/mac/osx/tools.html

useful.

Ciao /Andreas