Editor's Notes - Overview

Don Sawtelle

Those of you that are plugged into MacApp.Tech$ on AppleLink or America Online already know about the new Bay Area MacApp Developers Association (BAMADA) meetings that James Plamondon has been orchestrating.

These meetings are a must for MacApp developers within driving distance of Cupertino-you can check out the latest MacApp tools and debuggers, glimpse the face of the latest MacApp 3.0 alpha, and follow lively comparisons of MacApp and object application frameworks that run on other platforms. It's possible that future meetings may be videotaped and available through MADA.

Across the continent, MacApp developers in Washington, D.C. are now meeting regularly in a new location near Tyson's corner. The June meeting, 7:15 p.m. on the 26th, will be presented by Mark Gerl and Yvon Perreault of McDonnell Douglas. They'll provide a taste of what it's like to develop using MacApp 3.0 alpha, and cover pitfalls you might encounter when you upgrade your application from MacApp 2.0 to 3.0. For directions, link Leslie Jeffries at JEFFRIES.L on AppleLink and she'll send you a map. After June, meetings in D.C. will normally be held on the third Wednesday of each month.

NEW COVERAGE OF LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL MADA MEETINGS

With MADA meetings proliferating, it seemed like a good idea to start a regular column that includes notes on the interesting topics that have been presented, plus the agendas of future meetings. The first installment in this issue concentrates on BAMADA, just because that's what we had information on at press time. Coverage will expand in future issues to cover all local MADA meetings, so those of you who are involved in meetings in D.C., the Pacific Northwest, Chicago, or anywhere else on the planet, plan to submit your meeting notes and agendas for future meetings by July 15th in order to make the August issue.

NEW TECHNICAL COLUMN-ACADEMIC DEVELOPERS

Dale Curtis of the University of Arizona debuts in this issue with the first installment of the new Academic Developers column: Mathematics computing at the University of Arizona. In future issues, Curtis would like to showcase projects at a variety of academic sites; get in touch if you are doing object programming on the Macintosh and might be interested in contributing information on your project, or in guest authoring a future installment of Academic Developers.

DAL, STREAMS, DEGOODY, PROGRESS

There are four articles on new building blocks in this issue, with complete source code on the FrameWorks Disk. You probably checked out these articles before reading these notes, so I won't describe them here; however, I do want to point out that in response to feedback from readers on the new format of FrameWorks, and a suggestion made at the WWDC by Jesse Feiler, complete class interfaces to all source code are printed in this issue-either they are embedded within the text of the article, or they can be found in complete listings at the end of the article. We'll continue to print class interfaces in future issues when at all practical.

HOW TO GET THE FRAMEWORKS DISK WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT

Starting with the June issue, if a FrameWorks author includes source for a significant recipe, building block, or sample application with their article, they receive one year's free subscription to the FrameWorks Disk. This is a bonus in addition to the usual author compensation that is paid for the article itself.

WHERE ARE THE MACAPP3BETA$ LINKS?

Due to space limitations, we couldn't print an edited compilation of messages from the MacApp3Beta$ AppleLink group address as we had planned. But if everything fits, they'll be on this issue's FrameWorks Disk, along with source code, article text, and MacApp.Tech$ messages since the last date covered by the conference CD-ROM.

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

FrameWorks has a new position intended for some of the authors who publish regularly in the journal: "Contributing Editor." A contributing editor (1) authors FrameWorks articles regularly, typically in the form of a column; (2) provides feedback and criticism on each issue, plus suggestions for the technical direction of future issues (an email message to the editor after each issue comes out will do); and (3) assists in recruiting great authors.

Our first new contributing editor is Eric Berdahl, author of The Soup Kitchen. We look forward to Berdahl's increased influence and involvement in the FrameWorks enterprise.

Are you interested in participating as a contributing editor to FrameWorks? Let me know-if you've not previously published in FrameWorks, we'll just make you write a few articles first.

LAME DUCK VP

Being editor of FrameWorks is enough, so I'm not running for re-election as Vice President of MADA. One of my last acts as lame duck VP has been recommending to the MADA board that the Vice President position be converted to an additional board member position, in order to reduce the number of uncontested elections. This change was approved at the MADA board meeting in May; I look forward to seeing a member who has some time to spend making a volunteer contribution to MADA step up and fill the new board slot.

COMING UP IN THE NEXT ISSUE

In the August issue, in addition to the regular columns, look for a SourceBug tutorial by Jeff Barbose, and a technical review of SourceBug by Matthew Stibbe; an article on how to add Edition Manager support to your MacApp 3.0 application, by Chris Knepper, who's writing the article so he can quit having to explain how; and the first in a series of three articles on Macintosh Common Lisp (MCL) and Common Lisp Object System (CLOS) by Jeffrey Stulin. Stulin's series will be based around his MCL implementation of Conway's game, "Life." He'll compare his new Lisp implementation to a similar implementation based on MacApp that he released last year, and cover the MCL development environment, CLOS, and the MCL class libraries along the way.