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Mac-Carbon-0.51
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/ Mac::Carbon

NAME

Mac::Carbon - Access to Mac OS Carbon API

SYNOPSIS

        use Mac::Carbon;
        use Mac::Carbon qw(:files :morefiles);

DESCRIPTION

This module provides documentation of the Mac::Carbon modules, and acts as a frontend to them.

Mac::Carbon is a collection of perl modules for accessing the Carbon API under Mac OS X. It is a port of the Toolbox modules written by Matthias Neeracher for MacPerl.

This module will load in all the Carbon modules, and export all of the functions, constants, and other variables. An export tag is set up for each module, so they may be selected individually.

This module exists primarily because in Mac OS X, all the Carbon functions are imported into a C program with a single header, Carbon.h, so Mac OS X users may prefer to load in the entire Carbon API with a single module.

For detailed information on the Carbon API (highly recommended, as a familiarity with Carbon is assumed in the POD), see apple.com.

        http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/Carbon/

The documentation is also located on your system, if you have the Developer Tools installed, at /Developer/Documentation/Carbon/.

Also of significant use are the related header files on your system. Use the `locate` command to find them. They contain current documentation and notes for the API.

The modules were written for Mac OS originally, and are in part being ported to Carbon. You may also be interested in the original documentation.

        http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macos8/

TOOLBOX MAPPINGS

Swiped from Mac/Toolbox.pod in the MacPerl distribution.

The Macintosh Operating System provides a rich API with thousands of toolbox calls. The MacPerl toolbox modules aim to make as much as possible of this functionality available to MacPerl programmers. The mapping of the toolbox interfaces into MacPerl is intended to be

  1. Convenient to use for Perl programmers.

  2. As close as possible to the C interfaces.

This translates into a mapping strategy which is discussed in the following sections.

Function mappings

MacPerl toolbox calls take their input arguments in the same order as the corresponding toolbox functions. Output arguments are never passed by reference, but returned from the calls. If there are several output arguments, a list is returned. If an error occurs, the function returns undef or () and the error code is available in the $^E variable.

        $port = GetPort();
        SetPort($port);
        $desc = AECreateDesc("TEXT", "Hello, World") or die $^E;

Data structure mappings

Complex data structures are mapped into blessed references. Data fields are available through member functions which return the value of a field if called without an argument and change the value if called with an argument.

        $rect = Rect->new(10, 20, 110, 220);
        $rect->top;
        $rect->right(250);

MAC OS X DIFFERENCES

The modules follow the same API under Mac OS X as Mac OS, except that the non-Carbon API is not supported (for example, NewHandle is supported, but NewHandleSys is not). Calling a function not supported by Carbon will generate an exception.

The MacPerl package is automatically bootstrapped in MacPerl; it is included here, though functions specific to the application and GUI (Answer, Pick, Reply, Quit, etc.) are not supported, and the MacPerl package must be loaded explicitly (e.g., use MacPerl;).

The Mac-specific error codes are put in $^E as in MacPerl, but $^E does not automatically convert the numeric error into a string in string context. See brian d foy's Mac::Errors module on the CPAN for this:

        use Mac::Errors '$MacError';
        my $info1 = FSpGetCatInfo($file1) or die $^E + 0;    # error number
        my $info2 = FSpGetCatInfo($file2) or die $MacError;  # error string

Mac::Errors is not included with or required by Mac::Carbon, but it is highly recommended.

$! is set at the same time $^E is set. This is different behavior from MacPerl, but similar to other platforms. On MacPerl, $^E is signed, and on Unix it is unsigned, so to get the numeric value from $^E, just add 0, as above. Could be worse.

Files are passed back and forth using Unix/POSIX filespecs (if you care about the gory details, a portion of the GUSI API has been reimplemented here, and it handles the conversions). Similarly, times are converted back and forth from the Mac OS epoch to the Unix epoch.

The support functions are in Carbon.h. See that file for descriptions of the issues, including bugs and possibilities for bugs, involved.

KNOWN BUGS

See http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=Mac-Carbon for more information.

  • Make test suite work without being run from Terminal.app.

  • [GS]etFileInfo fails on UFS.

  • Docs not updated for Carbon incompatibilities (including changes to Processes fields). Generate list of all unsupported functions.

  • Need more tests for Mac::Components, Mac::MoreFiles, Mac::Resources, Mac::InternetConfig, Mac::Processes, Mac::Sound.

  • In a few places, we need to know a text encoding, and assume it (such as in LSFindApplicationForInfo(), where Latin-1 is assumed). Is this correct?

  • FSSpecs are limited to 31 characters. I think. Ugh.

  • In Mac::Processes, there are some issues with unsupported fields in the ProcessInfo struct.

  • Not specific to the Carbon versions: the Mac:: modules define classes such as Handle which probably should be something else, like Mac::Handle or Mac::Carbon::Handle or Mac::Memory::Handle (other examples include AEDesc, Point, Rect). No one has really complained before except on principle, but still ...

  • Can we support XCMDs etc. via XL? Do we want to?

PACKAGES AND EXPORT TAGS

See each individual module for more information on use. See README for more information about modules not included here.

        Mac::AppleEvents        appleevents
        Mac::Components         components
        Mac::Files              files
        Mac::Gestalt            gestalt
        Mac::InternetConfig     internetconfig
        Mac::Memory             memory
        Mac::MoreFiles          morefiles
        Mac::Notification       notification
        Mac::OSA                osa     
        Mac::Processes          processes
        Mac::Resources          resources
        Mac::Sound              sound
        Mac::Speech             speech
        Mac::Types              types
        MacPerl                 macperl

AUTHOR

The Mac Toolbox modules were written by Matthias Neeracher <neeracher@mac.com>. They are currently maintained by Chris Nandor <pudge@pobox.com>.

THANKS

Michael Blakeley <mike@blakeley.com>, Emmanuel. M. Decarie <emm@scriptdigital.com>, brian d foy <comdog@panix.com>, David Hand <davidhand@davidhand.com>, Gero Herrmann <herr@ils.uec.ac.jp>, Paul McCann <pmccann@maths.adelaide.edu.au>, Dan Sugalksi <dan@sidhe.org>, Ken Williams <ken@mathforum.org>, Steve Zellers.

SEE ALSO

perl(1).