Subject: comp.lang.objective-c FAQ, part 2/3: ClassWare Listing Newsgroups: comp.lang.objective-c,comp.answers,news.answers From: tiggr@es.ele.tue.nl (Tiggr) Date: 17 Apr 1994 16:04:31 GMT Archive-name: Objective-C/classes Version: $Id: classes,v 2.11 1994/04/16 15:48:00 tiggr Exp $ Objective-C ClassWare Listing This is the second of three FAQ postings for comp.lang.objective-c. This posting lists available kits and classes, to aid the reader in answering the question `to re-use or to re-invent?'. In order to keep this list up to date and as interesting and diverse as possible, send your additions, deletions and suggestions to tiggr@es.ele.tue.nl. The available classes and kits are categorized as follows: Stepstone Stepstone libraries, for use with Stepstone's environment NeXT NeXT kits, for use with NEXTSTEP FSF FSF maintained/released classes for use with GNU CC Third Party commercial classes GPL classes released under the GPL Public Domain public domain classes---no GPL Stepstone Bundled with the compiler is ICpak 101 Foundation Class Library. This library provides twenty classes and more than three hundred methods including such things as Collections (OrdCltn, Stack, Set, Dictionary, SortCltn), Arrays (IdArray, IntArray), String, Sequences, Automatic Object I/O (ASCII Filer), etc. The ICpak 201 Graphical User Interface library is used to build iconic multi window user interfaces for workstation applications. The library consists of 58 classes and over 1,100 methods. Classes include such things as Controllers, Menu's, Menu Items, Icons, Windows(StdLayer), Timers, Buttons, Text, etc, etc. ICpak 201 is ported to X Windows, OpenWindows, Motif and SunView and provides a consistent user interface/ look-and-feel between all platforms. Contact The Stepstone Corporation 75 Glen Road Sandy Hook, CT 06482 tel: +1 203 426-1875 fax: +1 203 270-0106 telex: 506127 NeXT Common Classes Several classes provided with NeXTSTEP do not belong to a specific kit: Object (core of the runtime system, root of the general class hierarchy), Storage, List (an abstract array), HashTable (to store (key, object) associations), StreamTable (to write data to streams) and NXStringTable (to store (key, string) associations). Application Kit The Application Kit defines a set of Objective-C classes and protocols, C functions, and assorted constants and data types that are used by virtually every NeXTSTEP application. The pith of the Kit are the tools it provides for implementing a graphical, event-driven user interface: The Application Kit provides classes---most notably Window and View---that make drawing on the screen exquisitely succinct. Much of the unromantic work that's involved in drawing---communicating with hardware devices and screen buffers, clearing areas of the screen before drawing, coordinating overlapping drawing areas---is taken care of for you, letting you concentrate on the much more gratifying task of supplying code that simply draws. And even this task is assisted by many of the other classes and a number of C functions that provide drawing code for you. The Application Kit makes event handling extremely simple. The Responder class, from which many of the Kit's classes inherit, defines a mechanism by which the user's actions are passed to the objects in your application that can best respond to them. The Application class, which inherits from Responder, establishes the low-level connections that makes this system possible. It provides methods that inform your application of watershed events, such as when the user makes the application active and inactive, and when the user logs out or turns off the computer. By using these tools, you bless your application with a look and feel that's similar to other applications, making it easier for the user to recognize and use. (Introduction from the NeXTSTEP General Reference, "Application Kit" reprinted with permission. Copyright (c) 1993 NeXT Computer, Inc. All rights reserved.) Database Kit The Database Kit provides a comprehensive set of tools, classes, and protocols for building applications that use a high-level entity-relationship model to manipulate database servers such as those provided by Oracle or Sybase. The kit provides services that include: Communication with client-server databases. Modeling properties (attributes and relationships) of each database. Record management and buffering. Data flow between record managers and the application user interface. User interface objects for display and editing. (Introduction from the NeXTSTEP General Reference, "Database Kit" reprinted with permission. Copyright (c) 1993 NeXT Computer, Inc. All rights reserved.) Distributed Objects The Distributed Objects system provides a relatively simple way for applications to communicate with one another by allowing them to share Objective-C objects, even amongst applications running on different machines across a network. They are useful for implementing client-server and cooperative applications. The Distributed Objects system subsumes the network aspects of typical remote procedure call (RPC) programming, and allow an application to send messages to remote objects using ordinary Objective-C syntax. The Distributed Objects system takes the form of two classes, NXConnection and NXProxy. NXConnection objects are primarily bookkeepers that manage resources passed between applications. NXProxy objects are local objects that represent remote objects. When a remote object is passed to your application, it is passed in the form of a proxy that stands in for the remote object; messages to the proxy are forwarded to the remote object, so for most intents and purposes the proxy can be treated as though it were the object itself. Note that direct access to instance variables of the remote object isn't available through the proxy. (Introduction from the NeXTSTEP General Reference, "Distributed Objects" reprinted with permission. Copyright (c) 1993 NeXT Computer, Inc. All rights reserved.) Indexing Kit The Indexing Kit is a set of programmatic tools for managing data, especially the large amounts of data characteristic of information intensive applications. Much as the Application Kit provides a framework for a graphical interface, the Indexing Kit provides a framework for data management. The Indexing Kit supplies facilities for building custom databases and for searching the UNIX file system. Key benefits include guaranteed data integrity, excellent performance, thread-safe operation, tight integration with the NeXTSTEP programming environment, and the ability to efficiently store and retrieve Objective-C objects and unstructured data like text, sound, and images. The Indexing Kit consists of: A transaction-oriented foundation for storing and retrieving persistent data, using virtual memory mapping for efficient random access to parts of a file without reading or writing the entire file. Transactions guarantee data integrity on persistent storage media, and are also used to manage concurrent access to shared data. Fast sequential and associative access to stored data. Associative access is untyped, in that the programmer defines the data types of keys and their ordering by means of a comparison function or a format string. A simple data management capability based on the Objective-C run-time system. Records can be moved efficiently between working memory and the storage substrate in the form of Objective-C objects. Multiple indexes can be built over programmer-defined attributes, so that records can be ordered and retrieved by the values of their indexed attributes. A general query processing facility, including a declarative query language and its interpreter. Queries can be applied to individual objects, to collections of objects, or to the attribute/value lists produced by Indexing Kit's customizable text processing tools. High-level file system searching facilities based on the supporting layers described above, including fast literal searching of file contents. (Introduction from the NeXTSTEP General Reference, "Indexing Kit" reprinted with permission. Copyright (c) 1993 NeXT Computer, Inc. All rights reserved.) Mach Kit The Mach Kit provides an object-oriented interface to some of the features of the Mach operating system. At this time, it is most useful to applications that make use of the Distributed Objects system, since these applications rely upon Mach's message sending abilities to transport objects, ports, and data between processes. The Mach Kit may also be useful for drivers and multi threaded applications. The Mach Kit provides several classes and protocols, listed below. (Introduction from the NeXTSTEP General Reference, "Mach Kit" reprinted with permission. Copyright (c) 1993 NeXT Computer, Inc. All rights reserved.) NetInfo Kit The NetInfo Kit is a collection of classes and a single function used to provide a connection to and interface with NetInfo domains. The NetInfo Kit provides classes for basic interface with a domain as well as specialized panels. (Introduction from the NeXTSTEP General Reference, "NetInfo Kit" reprinted with permission. Copyright (c) 1993 NeXT Computer, Inc. All rights reserved.) 3D Kit The 3D Graphics Kit enables NeXTSTEP applications to model and render 3-dimensional scenes. Much as the Application Kit's 2D graphics capabilities are based on the Display PostScript interpreter, the 3D Kit's capabilities are based on the Interactive RenderMan renderer. There are both similarities and differences in the inner workings of the two implementations. One similarity is that both are implemented with a client-server model, in which client applications send drawing code to the Window Server, which does the actual drawing. Another similarity is that N3DCamera---the 3D Kit's View---generates all drawing code, both 2D and 3D, when its drawSelf: method is invoked. This keeps the Application Kit's display mechanism intact for both PostScript and RenderMan drawing. One difference in the implementations is in the code generated for drawing. For 2D drawing, a View sends PostScript code to the Window Server's Display PostScript interpreter. For 3D drawing, a View sends RenderMan Interface Bytestream (RIB) code to the Window Server's Interactive RenderMan renderer. (Introduction from the NeXTSTEP General Reference, "3D Graphics Kit" reprinted with permission. Copyright (c) 1993 NeXT Computer, Inc. All rights reserved.) Sound Kit The Sound Kit is designed to provide both low- and high-level access to sound hardware on workstations running NeXTSTEP, including support for a wide variety of sound formats, real-time mixing and compression. The Sound Kit consists of five general categories of objects: Sound Device Objects Sound Device objects, like NXSoundIn and NXSoundOut, wrap the low-level hardware and sound drivers into simple, extensible packages. Sound Streams Sound Stream objects, like NXPlayStream or NXRecordStream, allow the sound output of many simultaneous programs to be mixed, scaled, and processed before being sent out the Sound objects. The Sound Object The Sound object is NeXTSTEP's fundamental sound data storage and playback/recording facility. The SoundView Object NeXTSTEP's Sound View is a graphical display of sound data that interacts well with the NeXTSTEP GUI. The Sound Meter Object The Sound Meter displays the current running amplitude of a playing or recording sound (in mono), much like volume meters on amplifiers or tape decks. In addition to this library, NeXT provides two sets of sound driver and sound access functions. NXLiveVideoView The NXLiveVideoView class provides API for interactive display of live video on the screen of a NeXTdimension Computer. The NXLiveVideoView class specification provides a complete discussion of the NeXTdimension Computer's video capabilities and the API provided by NXLiveVideoView. (Introduction from the NeXTSTEP General Reference, "Video" reprinted with permission. Copyright (c) 1993 NeXT Computer, Inc. All rights reserved.) Applications There are several classes which solely exist to enable the programmer to add functionality to specific existing NEXTSTEP applications: IBPalette, IBInspector These classes allow developers to expand the functionality of the Interface Builder application, creating their own palettes of objects that can be dragged into an interface, and inspectors to set and view the attributes of those objects. Layout This class allows developers to add their own modules to the Preferences application. WMInspector This class allows developers to add their own file contents inspectors to the Workspace Manager application. Other Before NeXTSTEP 3.0, MusicKit was distributed as part of NEXTSTEP. MusicKit is now maintained and made available by CCRMA (see the entry under `Public Domain Kits'). Also until the advent of NeXTSTEP 3.0, PhoneKit was part of NeXTSTEP. PhoneKit classes provided easy to ISDN connections. Contact NeXT Computer, Inc. 900 Chesapeake Drive Redwood City, CA 94063 tel: +1 800 848 NEXT fax: +1 415 780 2801 email: NeXTanswers@NeXT.COM FSF Object Object is the root class which comes as part of the Objective-C runtime library provided with the GNU CC compiler. Collection Library The Collection Library is a library of Objective-C objects with similar functionality to Smalltalk's Collection objects. It includes: Set, Bag, Array, CircularArray, GapArray, Queue, Stack, Heap, LinkedList, BinaryTree, SplayTree, RBTree, Dictionary, MappedCollector, EltNodeCollector and DelegateList. Outside of its main hierarchy it also includes List, HashTable and Storage objects compatible with NeXT's objects of the same name. An alfa release of the Collection Library can be obtained by FTP from cs.rochester.edu:/pub/libcoll/libcoll-yymmdd.tar.gz, in which `yymmdd' is a string of digits specifies its date. The Collection Library needs GCC 2.5.0 or a more recent version to be compiled. Contact: mccallum@cs.rochester.edu Contact Free Software Foundation 675 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139 +1-617-876-3296 Third Party Kits Hot Technologies BARCODEKIT BarCodeKit is a comprehensive collection of object palettes for creating international standard bar codes. BarCodeKit allows both developers and organizations to quickly add bar coding to custom NEXTSTEP applications. By combining the power of object orientation and PostScript into a comprehensive library of bar code symbologies, BarCodeKit represents the state of the art in bar code technology. Developers can seamlessly add bar coding to an existing application in a matter of minutes by using any of the 35 pretested and reusable objects in the BarCodeKit library of palettes. Previously, adding bar coding to an application meant weeks or months of development, incompatibility with different bar code readers and the use of costly proprietary bar code printers. The BarCodeKit features a full range of bar code symbologies including Code 3 of 9, Code 39 Extended, UPC-A, UPC-E, HRI, NDC, EAN-8, EAN-13, JAN-8, JAN-13, ISBN, ISSN, SICI, SISAC, POSTNET, ABC, FIM, BRM, Interleaved Two of Five, MSI, Codabar, Code 11, Code 93, Code 128, Code 16K and Code 49. It complies to international, national, military and commercial bar coding standards including EAN, JAN, CEN, ANSI, MIL, USS and HIBCC. Furthermore, it provides developers with flexibility; bar codes created using the kit can be scaled and rotated to fit a specific area on a label or document and saved in EPS, EPSI (EPS with interchange bitmap preview for non Display PostScript computers), or TIFF formats. BarCodeKit is an excellent complement to NEXTSTEP's Application Kit and Database Kit It was nominated for a Best of Breed Award by the editors of NeXTWORLD Magazine. SERIALPORTKIT SerialPortKit is a fundamental class library and palette that makes communication with serial peripherals easy to add into your custom NEXTSTEP applications without any of the drawbacks of other solutions. You can use SerialPortKit to communicate with a variety of serial peripherals such as modems, printers, terminals, audio/video equipment, bar code readers, magnetic stripe readers, controllers and data acquisition devices. The SerialPortKit contains a single SerialPort class which interfaces to our SerialPortServer. Additional classes for specific peripherals are available in our SerialPeripheralsKit or through our consulting service. You can easily incorporate the SerialPortKit into your custom applications due to its professionally designed and truly object-oriented programming interface. The included Interface Builder palette, source code examples, on-line indexed reference manuals and tutorial further removes the tedious task of traditional serial port programming. Requires SerialPortServer or SerialPortServer Lite which are available also from Hot Technologies. Contact Hot Technologies 75 Cambridge Parkway, Suite E-504 Cambridge, MA 02142-1238 USA tel: + 1 617 252 0088 fax: + 1 617 876 8901 email: info@hot.com (NeXTmail) Berkeley Productivity Group BPG BLOCKS BPG BLOCKS is an open extensible manufacturing framework which supports a variety of applications including factory definition, real-time tracking, real-time scheduling, short-term planning, shift scheduling, production planning and capacity analysis. BPG BLOCKS creates a virtual reality which represents the real factory including the people, machines, material, processes, their dynamics and interactions. BPG BLOCKS is based on an easy to understand design where every software object represents either a real-world entity, or an important concept in the manufacturing domain. BPG BLOCKS' object-oriented manufacturing model mirrors the real world, captures numerous manufacturing details accurately, supports commonly used abstractions, and allows decisions to be made based on aggregate information. BPG BLOCKS forms the basis for building custom applications which meet the unique needs of your particular manufacturing facility. Objective-C Views Objective-C Views is a user interface class library for Microsoft Windows. Contact Christopher Lozinski BPG 35032 Maidstone Court Newark, CA 94560 tel: +1 510 795-6086 fax: +1 510 795-8077 email: lozinski@cup.portal.com M. Onyschuk and Associates Inc. OBJECT:Math OBJECT:Math is a comprehensive set of tools and 23 Objective-C classes used to add extensible math and string handling to your custom and commercial applications: Compiler---The OBJECT:Math Compiler converts math and string expressions (as might be typed into a spreadsheet cell, plotting package, etc.) into Objective-C objects. Unbundler---The OBJECT:Math Unbundler object allows end-users to extend their OBJECT:Math applications with custom-built or third-party OBJECT:Math function bundles. User Interface Objects---OBJECT:Math comes complete with a Lotus Improv style function picker, a variable editor, and objects used to display OBJECT:Math expression trees and other tree structures. As product sources are available the product may even be of interest to non-NeXT Objective-C programmers. Contact Mark Onyschuk M. Onyschuk and Associates Inc. tel: +1 416 462 3954 email: ask-oa@plexus.guild.org Stream Technologies Inc. Store Store is an Object Oriented User Level Virtual File System. It is described extensively in `Store - Object Oriented Virtual File System' by Timo Lehtinen, which is available by anonymous FTP from ftp.sti.fi:/pub/sti/doc/papers/store.ps. Contact Stream Technologies Inc. Valkj\"arventie 2 SF-02130 Espoo Finland tel: +358 0 4357 7348 fax: +358 0 4357 7340 email: info@sti.fi GPL Kits objcX An alpha version of an GNU Objective-C class library for X/Motif Windows is available via anonymous ftp from ftp.slac.stanford.edu:pub/sources/objcX-0.6.tar.gz. For lack of a good witty name, the library is called objcX. The library requires the List class from the Collection Library for GNU Objective-C (libcoll). Because we built this library to support porting NeXTSTEP applications to X/Motif and because our GUI programming experience has been with NeXTSTEP, this class library has a strongly resemblance to NeXT's AppKit. However, it is only a Objective-C wrapper to Motif widgets and does not support Display PostScript, rich text, pasteboard, drag and drop, services or many other things associated with the NeXTSTEP environment that are not available under X windows. Also available, for a NeXTSTEP platform only, is a program that converts an object archive file generated by the InterfaceBuilder (.nib file) into a GNU object archive file usable by the objcX class library. It is available from ftp.slac.stanford.edu:pub/sources/trnib-0.5.tar.gz This program requires NeXTSTEP developer and gcc. These announcements are also a call for help. The library and the translator program could use much more work in two areas... - first the library could be flushed out with more features to support larger applications - second, I would like to contribute the library to the GNU project. But it is based on Motif widgets which is not free software. Thus, work is needed to replace Motif widgets with widgets based on free software. Contact Paul F. Kunz Paul_Kunz@slac.stanford.edu (NeXT mail ok) Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford University Voice: (415) 926-2884 (NeXT) Fax: (415) 926-3587 Tiggr's Objective-C Library Tiggr's Objective-C Library, or tobjc for short, is a basic Objective-C library, whose functionality is based on Lisp. tobjc provides the following classes: LispObject, LispVector, Cons, Double, Integer, String, AVLTree, THashTable, StringTable, Trie, Lex, LexC and LexDFG. Furthermore, tobjc includes a program to extract documentation from Objective-C source files. All classes are a subclass of LispObject. The LispObject class provides its allocation routines and garbage collection (through class abstraction) to its subclasses. tobjc is undergoing continuous development. Test releases can be obtained by anonymous FTP to `ftp.es.ele.tue.nl' as `/pub/objc/tobjc-x.xx.tar.gz', where `x.xx' is some version indication. It is by no means finished yet, but certainly useful (I have used it for developing a VHDL->ASCIS DFG compiler). Contact Pieter J. `Tiggr' Schoenmakers email: tiggr@es.ele.tue.nl tel: +31 40 123484 fax: +31 40 128616 Public Domain Kits Various authors MiscKit The MiscKit is a collection of over sixty objects which extend the NEXTSTEP Objective-C development environment in various ways. It includes palletized subclasses of AppKit controls, foundation objects, and a variety of useful special purpose objects. Objects include strings, basic data structures, and kits for building swapping views and inspectors. There are also frameworks for building Info menus and a generic document handling architecture. Palettized objects include a logarithmic and circular sliders, a tri-state button, a combined Slider and TextField, and a read-only NXColorWell. There are other objects, functions, and useful macros in the kit as well. Documentation, examples, tutorials, and complete source code are distributed with the MiscKit. The kit itself is the product of over 25 Usenet personalities and is available for use in any project free of cost. The only restriction is that you acknowledge use of the kit in your project. Contact For more information or to be placed on the MiscKit discussion list, contact the kit administrator, Don Yacktman, by sending e-mail to misckit-request@byu.edu. CCRMA MusicKit The Music Kit provides tools for designing music applications. These tools address three topics: music representation, performance, and synthesis (digital sound generation and processing). The Objective-C classes defined in the Music Kit fall neatly into these three areas. The design goal of the Music Kit is to combine the interactive gestural control of MIDI with the precise timbral control of MUSIC 5-type systems in an extensible, object-oriented environment. To this end, the Music Kit is capable of fully representing MIDI. The Music Kit accepts MIDI in and can send MIDI out through the two serial ports at the back of the computer. Nonetheless, the Music Kit isn't limited by the MIDI specification; for example, its resolution of frequency and amplitude is much finer than MIDI's highly quantized values. The Music Kit generates sounds by sending synthesis instructions to the DSP. The generality of the synthesis software far surpasses that of commercial synthesizers. While most synthesizers employ only one type of synthesis-the Yamaha DX-7 uses only frequency modulation, for example-the Music Kit can implement virtually any sound synthesis strategy. And since the synthesis engine (the DSP) and the control stream are brought together in a single high-performance computer, the Music Kit makes possible an unprecedented level of expressive control. (from Documentation/MusicKit+DSP/General/SoundMusicDSP.rtfd) MusicKit used to be supplied by NeXT as part of NeXTSTEP (pre 3.0). It is now maintained by CCRMA and available by FTP from ccrma-ftp.stanford.edu. There are two packages: pub/MusicKit_4.0.pkg.tar Class library, header files, documentation, programming examples, and a suite of applications (size = 9MB). pub/MusicKitSource_4.0.pkg.tar Source of the MusicKit class library (size = 7MB). Contact email: musickit@ccrma.stanford.edu ADMINISTRATIVIA The information in this file comes AS IS, WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY. You may use the information contained in this file or distribute this file, as long as you do not modify it, make money out of it or take the credits. All trademarks appearing in this file are owned by their respective owner. To increase the information content in this file, any indication to that effect is not present in the FAQ other than in this paragraph. The first version of this FAQ was written by Bill Shirly, helped by the feedback and information given to him by a lot of people. The current version is maintained by Tiggr, supported by feedback from Glen Diener, Christopher Lozinski, Sean Luke and a lot of other people. Mail your bug reports, comments, suggestions and additions to tiggr@es.ele.tue.nl.