Chapter 8. Other Frameworks
Until this point, this book has focused on Cocoa’s core frameworks, Foundation and Application Kit. However, Mac OS X contains many frameworks that you can leverage. Just look in /System/Libraray/Frameworks to see how many there are, or launch the Apple System Profiler (/Applications/Utilities) and click on the Frameworks tab.
Not all frameworks, however, are implemented in Objective-C, as are the Foundation framework and Application Kit. Most Mac OS X frameworks are implemented in C since that language provides the most universal API that can be accessed by the widest range of application environments, including Cocoa. Several newer frameworks provide Objective-C interfaces in addition to C.
This chapter looks at some of the Objective-C frameworks provided by Apple. However, Apple isn’t the only provider of frameworks. Many free and commercially available Objective-C frameworks are offered by other developers. Several of these third-party frameworks will be mentioned at the end of the chapter. This chapter covers additional Objective-C frameworks, including:
- AddressBook
Provides classes that allow applications to interface with Mac OS X’s global Address Book database.
- Message
This small framework provides services to applications for sending email messages.
- DiscRecording and DiscRecordingUI
These two frameworks provide access to the system’s disc recording APIs, giving any Cocoa application the ability to burn data to CDs and DVDs.
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