Learning Carbon

The Carbon Factory Tour

Because Carbon contains many, many programming interfaces, it can be quite daunting to a new developer. While this book provides a good start, at some point you will need to begin fending for yourself. What interfaces you will require depends on the type of applications you want to write, but as is often the case, some are more commonly used than others. This section divides up the Carbon interfaces according to usage (from fundamental to esoteric) and gives some useful information about each one. To learn more about a particular interface, you can use the Carbon Help feature integrated into Project Builder (to be described later in this book). You can also consult the technical documentation on the Apple developer web site.

The Starter Kit

This section covers the interfaces most likely to be called by a Macintosh application (and covers those that can be found in this book). These managers and services provide basic user interface functionality as well as fundamental features, such as the ability to save and print files. You can build basic but fully functional Carbon applications using the interfaces described here.

Note

If Carbon were an interface to build automobiles, the Starter Kit interfaces would define the engine, wheels, brakes and other essential components, as well as the user interface (dashboard, steering wheel, gas and brake pedals, and so on).

The Toolbox interfaces

The following interfaces are grouped together because they generally work ...