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MacOS X interface to core frameworks

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Andre Schnoor

MacOS X interface to core frameworks

Hi all,

I'm currently finetuning a rather complex application (http://www.cognitone.com/products/mps/intro/page.stml?nc=1) and optimizing it for the MacOS X environment. Unfortunately I'm having a hard time implementing a number of rather basic functions which are not supported by the VM:

- Get current locale (i.e. user language, the VM primitive doesn't seem to work)
- Get current user name and home directory
- Launch browser or mail application for a given URL (visit website from menu)
- Launch applications for a given filename (open PDF user manual from menu)
- etc.

The principles of interfacing Apple frameworks through DLLCC are not a problem for me (already sucessfully implemented a real-time multimedia engine as a framework and using it for this app). I thought, however, it was a good idea to not reinvent the wheel and ask the community whether there are existing approaches to start from.

* Does anybody perhaps know of a template for a subclass of ExternalInterface that can be extended to fulfill the above requirements? I did not find such thing in the public repository.

* Has anyone implemented the behavior of the global Mac menu bar for OS X?

* Where is a good place to accumulate and share all things Mac? I mean, before it is mature enough to be published in the repository.

Thanks in advance,
Andre

Reinout Heeck

Re: MacOS X interface to core frameworks

On Oct 24, 2006, at 2:20 PM, Andre Schnoor wrote:

Hi all,

I'm currently finetuning a rather complex application (http://www.cognitone.com/products/mps/intro/page.stml?nc=1) and optimizing it for the MacOS X environment. Unfortunately I'm having a hard time implementing a number of rather basic functions which are not supported by the VM:

Some workarounds:

- Get current locale (i.e. user language, the VM primitive doesn't seem to work)

UnixProcess cshOne: 'locale'

- Get current user name and home directory

CEnvironment getenv: 'USER'

CEnvironment getenv: 'HOME'

- Launch browser or mail application for a given URL (visit website from menu)

UnixProcess cshOne: 'open http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com'

- Launch applications for a given filename (open PDF user manual from menu)

UnixProcess cshOne: 'open ''/Library/Documentation/User Guides And Information/Mac mini Users Guide.pdf'''

* Where is a good place to accumulate and share all things Mac? I mean, before it is mature enough to be published in the repository.

Publish into the repository please, use the blessing levels to indicate maturity.

It is silly *not* to use public versioned storage for this kind of growing thing..

Create a mac-specific 'cool things in the open repository' page on the Cincom wiki.

HTH,

Reinout Heeck

Re: MacOS X interface to core frameworks

In reply to this post by Andre Schnoor

I forgot to include a workaround for sending mail:

UnixProcess cshOne: 'open ''mailto:[hidden email]?subject=Crash%
20Report&body=a%3d0%0d%0ab%3d42'''

R
-

Mark Pirogovsky-3

Re: MacOS X interface to core frameworks

Reinout,

The mailto: protocol is available on both PC and Unix variants, so one
can use it on almost all supported platforms. However in general the
command size for the mailto: is limited somewhere in the area of 2000 bytes.

Is there other way to send e-mail of arbitrary size, not only short
messages ?

On windows it is possible to use some of the MAPI protocols, but that
usually require fair amount of work via the DLLCC.

--Mark

Reinout Heeck wrote:

>
>
> I forgot to include a workaround for sending mail:
>
> UnixProcess cshOne: 'open ''mailto:[hidden email]?subject=Crash%
> 20Report&body=a%3d0%0d%0ab%3d42'''
>
>
> R
> -
>
>
>

Karsten Kusche

Re: MacOS X interface to core frameworks

hi,

If you use the 'open' command this will only work on Mac OS X and if i
remember correctly it will also work with huge mails.

Karsten

Mark Pirogovsky wrote:

> Reinout,
>
> The mailto: protocol is available on both PC and Unix variants, so one
> can use it on almost all supported platforms. However in general the
> command size for the mailto: is limited somewhere in the area of 2000
> bytes.
>
> Is there other way to send e-mail of arbitrary size, not only short
> messages ?
>
> On windows it is possible to use some of the MAPI protocols, but that
> usually require fair amount of work via the DLLCC.
>
> --Mark
>
> Reinout Heeck wrote:
>>
>>
>> I forgot to include a workaround for sending mail:
>>
>> UnixProcess cshOne: 'open ''mailto:[hidden email]?subject=Crash%
>> 20Report&body=a%3d0%0d%0ab%3d42'''
>>
>>
>> R
>> -
>>
>>
>>
>
>

Andre Schnoor

Re: MacOS X interface to core frameworks

In reply to this post by Reinout Heeck

Thanks Reinout,

your straight and simple workarounds will do it for a while.

The locale shell command however, doesn't deliver the correct settings.
Which is probably also the reason why the VM primitive doesn't do
either. It seems the terminal shell always runs in generic "C" mode.

The Wiki page for MacOS X solutions in progress is a good idea. The new
Intel Mac (and OSX in general) currently gets more and more momentum and
deserves better support. With a little help from the community, we could
perhaps aggregate essential things like native file and print dialogs,
the Mac menu bar, etc etc. I'm willing to put some effort into that.

Andre

Reinout Heeck

Re: MacOS X interface to core frameworks

In reply to this post by Mark Pirogovsky-3

On Oct 24, 2006, at 3:58 PM, Mark Pirogovsky wrote:

> Reinout,
>
> The mailto: protocol is available on both PC and Unix variants, so
> one can use it on almost all supported platforms. However in
> general the command size for the mailto: is limited somewhere in
> the area of 2000 bytes.

Not 'in general' but 'on MsWindows', apparently this is a limitation
of Internet Explorer:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/208427

I experimented with it on my Mac and to my surprise the shell is the
limiting factor, complaining about 'word too long'.

So instead I tried:

UnixProcess
forkJob: 'open'
arguments: (Array with: (
'mailto:[hidden email]?subject=Crash%20Report&body='
, (String new: 255*1024 withAll: $a)
, '%20the%20end')).

Which works, changing the 255 to 256 makes it fail, so it seems that
with this scheme you are limited to a maximum URL size of 256k (and a
maximum body size depending on how many characters you need to url-
encode).

R
-

>
> Is there other way to send e-mail of arbitrary size, not only short
> messages ?
>
> On windows it is possible to use some of the MAPI protocols, but
> that usually require fair amount of work via the DLLCC.
>
> --Mark
>
> Reinout Heeck wrote:
>> I forgot to include a workaround for sending mail:
>> UnixProcess cshOne: 'open ''mailto:[hidden email]?subject=Crash%
>> 20Report&body=a%3d0%0d%0ab%3d42'''
>> R
>> -
>
>

Alan Knight-2

Re: MacOS X interface to core frameworks

In reply to this post by Andre Schnoor

As I recall, the Mac isn't using the normal Unix locale information, but has its own information stored elsehwere.

At 10:32 AM 10/24/2006, Andre Schnoor wrote:

Thanks Reinout,

your straight and simple workarounds will do it for a while.

The locale shell command however, doesn't deliver the correct settings. Which is probably also the reason why the VM primitive doesn't do either. It seems the terminal shell always runs in generic "C" mode.

The Wiki page for MacOS X solutions in progress is a good idea. The new Intel Mac (and OSX in general) currently gets more and more momentum and deserves better support. With a little help from the community, we could perhaps aggregate essential things like native file and print dialogs, the Mac menu bar, etc etc. I'm willing to put some effort into that.

Andre

Alan Knight [|], Cincom Smalltalk Development

[hidden email]

http://www.cincom.com/smalltalk

"The Static Typing Philosophy: Make it fast. Make it right. Make it run." - Niall Ross

tblanchard

Re: MacOS X interface to core frameworks

In reply to this post by Andre Schnoor

Try: defaults read NSGlobalDomain AppleLocale

On Oct 24, 2006, at 7:32 AM, Andre Schnoor wrote:

> Thanks Reinout,
>
> your straight and simple workarounds will do it for a while.
>
> The locale shell command however, doesn't deliver the correct
> settings. Which is probably also the reason why the VM primitive
> doesn't do either. It seems the terminal shell always runs in
> generic "C" mode.
>
> The Wiki page for MacOS X solutions in progress is a good idea. The
> new Intel Mac (and OSX in general) currently gets more and more
> momentum and deserves better support. With a little help from the
> community, we could perhaps aggregate essential things like native
> file and print dialogs, the Mac menu bar, etc etc. I'm willing to
> put some effort into that.
>
> Andre
>

Andre Schnoor

Re: MacOS X interface to core frameworks

Thanks Todd, it really works:

MacOSXSystemSupport new
getVariable: 'AppleLocale' ifAbsent:[ 'en' ]

Cheers,
Andre

Todd Blanchard wrote:

> Try: defaults read NSGlobalDomain AppleLocale
>
>
> On Oct 24, 2006, at 7:32 AM, Andre Schnoor wrote:
>
>> Thanks Reinout,
>>
>> your straight and simple workarounds will do it for a while.
>>
>> The locale shell command however, doesn't deliver the correct
>> settings. Which is probably also the reason why the VM primitive
>> doesn't do either. It seems the terminal shell always runs in generic
>> "C" mode.
>>
>> The Wiki page for MacOS X solutions in progress is a good idea. The
>> new Intel Mac (and OSX in general) currently gets more and more
>> momentum and deserves better support. With a little help from the
>> community, we could perhaps aggregate essential things like native
>> file and print dialogs, the Mac menu bar, etc etc. I'm willing to put
>> some effort into that.
>>
>> Andre
>>
>
>