The best-selling introduction to Cocoa, once again updated to cover the latest Mac programming technologies, and still enthusiastically recommended by experienced Mac OS X developers.   “Aaron’s book is the gold standard for Mac OS X programming books—beautifully written, and thoughtfully sculpted. The best book on Leopard development.” —Scott Stevenson, www.theocacao.com   “This is the first book I’d recommend for anyone wanting to learn Cocoa from scratch. Aaron’s one of the few (perhaps only) full-time professional Cocoa instructors, and his teaching experience shows in the book.” —Tim Burks, software developer and creator of the Nu programming language, www.programming.nu   “If you’re a UNIX or Windows developer who picked up a Mac OS X machine recently in hopes of developing new apps or porting your apps to Mac users, this book should be strongly considered as one of your essential reference and training tomes.” —Kevin H. Spencer, Apple Certified Technical Coordinator   If you’re developing applications for Mac OS X, Cocoa® Programming for Mac® OS X, Third Edition, is the book you’ve been waiting to get your hands on. If you’re new to the Mac environment, it’s probably the book you’ve been told to read first. Covering the bulk of what you need to know to develop full-featured applications for OS X, written in an engaging tutorial style, and thoroughly class-tested to assure clarity and accuracy, it is an invaluable resource for any Mac programmer.   Specifically, Aaron Hillegass introduces the three most commonly used Mac developer tools: Xcode, Interface Builder, and Instruments. He also covers the Objective-C language and the major design patterns of Cocoa. Aaron illustrates his explanations with exemplary code, written in the idioms of the Cocoa community, to show you how Mac programs should be written. After reading this book, you will know enough to understand and utilize Apple’s online documentation for your own unique needs. And you will know enough to write your own stylish code.   Updated for Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, this revised edition includes coverage of Xcode 3, Objective-C 2, Core Data, the garbage collector, and CoreAnimation.

Table of Contents:
Preface xvii Acknowledgments xix   Chapter 1: Cocoa: What Is It? 1 A Little History 1 Tools 3 Language 4 Objects, Classes, Methods, and Messages 4 Frameworks 6 How to Read This Book 6 Typographical Conventions 7 Common Mistakes 7 How to Learn 8   Chapter 2: Let’s Get Started 9 In Xcode 9 In Interface Builder 13 Back in Xcode 23 Documentation 29 What Have You Done? 30   Chapter 3: Objective-C 33 Creating and Using Instances 33 Using Existing Classes 35 Creating Your Own Classes 46 The Debugger 58 What Have You Done? 62 For the More Curious: How Does Messaging Work? 62 Challenge 64   Chapter 4: Memory Management 65 Turning the Garbage Collector On and Off 66 Living with the Garbage Collector 68 Living with Retain Counts 68 What Have You Done? 77   Chapter 5: Target/Action 79 Some Commonly Used Subclasses of NSControl 81 Start the SpeakLine Example 85 Lay Out the Nib File 86 Implementing the AppController Class 88 For the More Curious: Setting the Target Programmatically 90 Challenge 90 Debugging Hints 92   Chapter 6: Helper Objects 95 Delegates 96 The NSTableView and Its dataSource 99 Lay Out the User Interface 102 Make Connections 103 Edit AppController.m 105 For the More Curious: How Delegates Work 108 Challenge: Make a Delegate 109 Challenge: Make a Data Source 110   Chapter 7: Key-Value Coding; Key-Value Observing 111 Key-Value Coding 111 Bindings 113 Key-Value Observing 115 Making Keys Observable 116 Properties and Their Attributes 118 For the More Curious: Key Paths 120 For the More Curious: Key-Value Observing 121   Chapter 8: NSArrayController 123 Starting the RaiseMan Application 124 Key-Value Coding and nil 132 Add Sorting 133 For the More Curious: Sorting without NSArrayController 134 Challenge 1 135 Challenge 2 135   Chapter 9: NSUndoManager 139 NSInvocation 139 How the NSUndoManager Works 140 Adding Undo to RaiseMan 142 Key-Value Observing 145 Undo for Edits 146 Begin Editing on Insert 149 For the More Curious: Windows and the Undo Manager 151   Chapter 10: Archiving 153 NSCoder and NSCoding 154 The Document Architecture 157 Saving and NSKeyedArchiver 161 Loading and NSKeyedUnarchiver 162 Setting the Extension and Icon for the File Type 163 For the More Curious: Preventing Infinite Loops 166 For the More Curious: Creating a Protocol 167 For the More Curious: Document-Based Applications without Undo 167 Universal Type Identifiers 168   Chapter 11: Basic Core Data 171 NSManagedObjectModel 171 Interface 173 How Core Data Works 180   Chapter 12: Nib Files and NSWindowController 183 NSPanel 183 Adding a Panel to the Application 184 For the More Curious: NSBundle 194 Challenge 195   Chapter 13: User Defaults 197 NSDictionary and NSMutableDictionary 198 NSUserDefaults 200 Setting the Identifier for the Application 202 Creating Keys for the Names of the Defaults 202 Registering Defaults 203 Letting the User Edit the Defaults 203 Using the Defaults 205 For the More Curious: NSUserDefaultsController 207 For the More Curious: Reading and Writing Defaults from the Command Line 207 Challenge 208   Chapter 14: Using Notifications 209 What Notifications Are 209 What Notifications Are Not 210 NSNotification and NSNotificationCenter 210 Posting a Notification 212 Registering as an Observer 213 Handling the Notification When It Arrives 214 The userInfo Dictionary 214 For the More Curious: Delegates and Notifications 215 Challenge 216   Chapter 15: Using Alert Panels 217 Make the User Confirm the Deletion 218 Challenge 221   Chapter 16: Localization 223 Localizing a Nib File 224 String Tables 226 For the More Curious: ibtool 230 For the More Curious: Explicit Ordering of Tokens in Format Strings 231   Chapter 17: Custom Views 233 The View Hierarchy 233 Getting a View to Draw Itself 235 Drawing with NSBezierPath 240 NSScrollView 242 Creating Views Programmatically 245 For the More Curious: Cells 245 For the More Curious: isFlipped 247 Challenge 248   Chapter 18: Images and Mouse Events 249 NSResponder 249 NSEvent 249 Getting Mouse Events 251 Using NSOpenPanel 251 Composite an Image onto Your View 256 The View’s Coordinate System 258 Autoscrolling 261 For the More Curious: NSImage 261 Challenge 262   Chapter 19: Keyboard Events 263 NSResponder 265 NSEvent 265 Create a New Project with a Custom View 266 For the More Curious: Rollovers 274 The Fuzzy Blue Box 275   Chapter 20: Drawing Text with Attributes 277 NSFont 277 NSAttributedString 278 Drawing Strings and Attributed Strings 280 Making Letters Appear 281 Getting Your View to Generate PDF Data 283 For the More Curious: NSFontManager 286 Challenge 1 286 Challenge 2 286   Chapter 21: Pasteboards and Nil-Targeted Actions 287 NSPasteboard 288 Add Cut, Copy, and Paste to BigLetterView 289 Nil-Targeted Actions 290 For the More Curious: Which Object Sends the Action Message? 293 For the More Curious: Lazy Copying 293 Challenge 1 294 Challenge 2 294   Chapter 22: Categories 295 Add a Method to NSString 295 For the More Curious: Declaring Private Methods 297 For the More Curious: Declaring Informal Protocols 297   Chapter 23: Drag-and-Drop 299 Make BigLetterView a Drag Source 300 Make BigLetterView a Drag Destination 303 For the More Curious: Operation Mask 307   Chapter 24: NSTimer 309 Lay Out the Interface 311 Make Connections 312 Adding Code to AppController 314 For the More Curious: NSRunLoop 316 Challenge 316   Chapter 25: Sheets 317 Adding a Sheet 318 For the More Curious: contextInfo 324 For the More Curious: Modal Windows 325   Chapter 26: Creating NSFormatters 327 A Basic Formatter 328 The delegate of the NSControl 334 Checking Partial Strings 335 Formatters That Return Attributed Strings 337   Chapter 27: Printing 339 Dealing with Pagination 339 For the More Curious: Am I Drawing to the Screen? 344 Challenge 344   Chapter 28: Web Service 345 AmaZone 346 Lay Out the Interface 347 Write Code 349 Challenge: Add a WebView 353   Chapter 29: View Swapping 355 Design 356 Resizing the Window 362   Chapter 30: Core Data Relationships 365 Edit the Model 365 Create Custom NSManagedObject Classes 366 Lay Out the Interface 369 Events and nextResponder 372   Chapter 31: Garbage Collection 375 Non-object Data Types 376 Polynomials Example 377 Instruments 383 For the More Curious: Weak References 385 Challenge: Do Bad Things 385   Chapter 32: Core Animation 387 Creating CALayer 388 Using CALayer and CAAnimation 390   Chapter 33: A Simple Cocoa/OpenGL Application 397 Using NSOpenGLView 397 Writing the Application 398   Chapter 34: NSTask 405 Multithreading versus Multiprocessing 405 ZIPspector 406 Asynchronous Reads 410 iPing 411 Challenge: .tar and .tgz files 415   Chapter 35: The End 417 Challenge 418   Index 419