The Cocoa Frameworks
Cocoa has two object-oriented frameworks: Foundation
(Foundation.framework) and Application Kit
(AppKit.framework), as shown in Figure 1.2.

Figure 1-2. The Cocoa frameworks
The classes in Foundation provide objects and functionality that are the basis, or “foundation,” of Cocoa. The classes in Application Kit furnish the objects and behavior that your users see in the user interface, such as windows and buttons, and handle their mouse clicks and key presses. The Application Kit depends directly on Foundation.
Foundation
The Foundation framework defines a base layer of Objective-C classes. Besides providing a set of useful primitive object classes, it introduces several paradigms that define functionality not covered by the Objective-C language (detailed in Chapter 3). The Foundation Framework is designed with these goals in mind:
Provide a set of basic utility classes.
Make software development easier by introducing consistent conventions for paradigms such as memory management.
Support Unicode strings, object persistence, and file management.
The Foundation framework includes the root object class, classes representing basic data types such as strings and byte arrays, collection classes for storing other objects, classes representing system information like dates and classes representing communication ports. Figure 1.3 shows the features provided by Foundation. ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access