This manual is a collection of topics designed to help you implement advanced features of PowerPlant and Mac OS in your code.
Welcome to the PowerPlant Advanced Topics manual. This manual shows you how to use PowerPlant to implement a wide variety of advanced features of the Mac OS. There is a chapter for each topic. Each chapter begins with an introduction. They are:
The chapter on debugging is completely new. Other chapters have been revised for updates and corrections.
To get the most from this manual, you should be familiar with PowerPlant programming. PowerPlant is a Mac OS application framework written in C++. Therefore you should be familiar with Mac OS programming, and with the C++ language.
In addition, this manual assumes you are familiar with the material covered in The PowerPlant Book. That title is available as part of the CodeWarrior documentation. The PowerPlant Book introduces you to PowerPlant and how to write a PowerPlant application. It covers basic PowerPlant features such as framework architecture, framework design, panes, views, controls, debugging, menus, windows, dialogs, file I/O, printing, periodicals, and attachments.
Most chapters in this manual follow the same internal structure. The first part of each chapter discusses PowerPlant fundamentals for the topic at hand. It introduces you to the classes involved in that chapter and how you use them. Each chapter discusses the relevant member functions and data members, the inheritance chain, and the common situations in which you use each class.
The second part of each chapter is a code exercise. In this part of the chapter you write real PowerPlant code following step-by-step instructions. This gives you an opportunity for hands-on practice with the real thing.
The code exercises are all application-based. PowerPlant is first and foremost an application framework, after all. However, you can use PowerPlant classes for other programming projects such as code resources and shared libraries.
Pick a topic that interests you, and go to that chapter. You do not need to read this manual sequentially. Each chapter is an independent entity. In each chapter you will learn what you need to know to use PowerPlant effectively to implement your chosen functionality.