On Thu, 18 Jan 2001 Richard MacLemale <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> OK, the official release date for OS X is now March 24...
>
> How about the MetaCard engine for OS X? Is there any chance that we can get
> an idea as to when this blessed event may occur? I can't wait to start
> designing on OS X.
Trust me, you can wait. The good part is, it really isn't much
different than development on any other platform. Just a lot slower
and requiring two or three times as much memory just to run the OS ;-)
> I also recommend that we (MetaCard developers) pool our resources to come up
> with some common solutions to making our apps look more "OS X-like." I'm
> thinking specifically of ask file, answer file, answer password, etc. This
> is one of the VERY few areas where I think MetaCard is still weak. Yeah, I
> know, you can create your own versions of ask and answer, but the default is
> pretty ugly. It ain't gonna cut it with folks looking for those nifty
> throbbing capsule-looking buttons. I'm thinking a JPEG file for the
> backdrop and maybe an animated GIF to simulate the new buttons?
I'm not sure I follow this: MetaCard uses the system dialogs for ask
and answer file, so they should look just like every other application
(well, actually we use Navigation Services now, which may look
different than some of the other apps you use, but that's just because
those apps haven't been updated). The regular ask and answer dialogs
may still require a little platform-specific tweaking, but now that
they support switchable icons they're pretty close to what's used in
other apps.
> Anyway, since OS X is sooooo close, I wonder if we might possibly catch a
> hint of when MetaCard will have an engine for it?
We just finished reworking our schedule for the next release in
response to the OS X release announcement. OS X and the Carbon
libraries are still changing too frequently for us to plan a release
on or before that date, but we should be in beta by then with a
release a few weeks afterward, depending on how severely the release
version of OS X breaks the beta version we're testing at the time.
Just FYI, Carbonizing turned out to be a much more invasive procedure
than we had expected, and I'm sure we got off easy because the Mac
version of MetaCard wasn't done all that long ago. I'd guess that
Carbonizing some of those older apps out there is going to be a real
challenge and so it'll probably be a long time before most people will
be able to stop using the compatibility box (aka Classic). Consider
yourself forewarned that there are going to be a lot of limitations
and stuff that just doesn't work right in this first release of
MetaCard for OS X, and at least initially, compatibility between the
OS X version and the other Mac versions is likely to be worse than
compatibility among the platforms we currently support. It's also
likely that there will be *three* Mac engines for the next few
releases because it's looking like Carbon won't be supported on enough
MacOS versions to make it practical to replace the PPC engine with the
Carbon version.
While it's too early to predict exactly what other new features will
make it into the next release, and that list will be much shorter
than what we were originally planning (we didn't figure OS X would be
an issue until summer sometime, which may still turn out to be the
case ;-), we do have quite a few whiz-bang things already in the can
and I'm sure Win32 and UNIX developers won't be disappointed!
Regards,
Scott
> :)
> Richard MacLemale
> Instructional Technology Specialist
> James W. Mitchell High School
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Scott Raney [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.metacard.com
MetaCard: You know, there's an easier way to do that...
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