Editor's Note

Mary Elaine Califf

New Features for frameworks

In this issue you'll find the first appearance of a new section: Tricks of the Trade. This section provides a place for short pieces (no more than three pages) that focus on the process of development and the best use of our tools. This month, Robert Lenoil shows us how to modify the startup process in order to simplify switching between versions of MacApp. Future topics for this section might include tips on improving the performance of the build process (other than purchasing a Quadra) and tips for converting Object Pascal to C++. Any idea that you feel is worth writing about but doesn't require a full-length article might belong in Tricks of the Trade.

This month we also have a guest editorial from Jeff Stulin on the subject of object-oriented dynamic languages. This appears in conjunction with the announcement of the new OODL SIG. I look forward, as I hope you do, to further notices from this SIG as well as from the various regional MADA groups.

Another feature that I would like to implement is a Letters to the Editor column. FrameWorks is written for you, but I can change it to meet your needs better only if I know what those needs are. Please write to me, publicly or privately, and make your opinions and ideas known.

ALSO In this issue

As always, the technical columns and features are the most important feature of FrameWorks this month. In Children of the DogCow, Kent Sandvik identifies common sources of bugs in MacApp programs and gives us some tips on both finding the problems and preventing them from occurring. John Baxter's second article on Prograph focuses on using it to create Macintosh applications. If you dislike the flicker as your overly complex views respond to update events, see Ken Ryall's article. He describes a unit that supports offscreen drawing in MacApp 3. Finally, don't miss Lonnie Millet's article on exception handling. The first of two parts, it explains how exception handling works in both MacApp 2 and 3.

Other items of interest include a brief overview of Frontier by John Baxter. As always, James Plamondon provides coverage of the latest Bamada meetings. And, for those who missed it, we have coverage of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference.

FrameWorks depends on you

We will all miss Don Sawtelle, who did an excellent job as editor. I know that you join me in wishing him well as he focuses on new pursuits. I hope that I will be able to continue to improve FrameWorks as he did, but I can only do that with your help. Write and tell me what you like about FrameWorks and how you would improve it. Send in a review of your favorite book on object-oriented programming or of a useful programming tool. Write that article you've been thinking about for the last six months and send it in. Together, we can make FrameWorks even better.