Beginning Mac OS® X Programming

9.5. Summary

You learned a lot in this chapter, including the following:

• How to manage memory using functions supplied by Carbon, CoreFoundation, and Darwin. For the most part, these functions work in the same way: You use one function call to allocate memory, and another to release it. CoreFoundation also supports reference counting, much like Objective-C objects.

• How to use Carbon Events to connect Carbon application interfaces up to your custom source code. You register callback functions with Carbon that get called when certain events are generated. User interface elements in your nib file can have specific commands associated with them as well.

• Techniques for calling Carbon API from Cocoa applications. For the most part you can simply call Carbon functions from within a Cocoa application. CoreFoundation helps bridge the gap between Carbon and Cocoa by providing data types that can pose as Foundation objects and vice versa.

• How to track local files using the Carbon File Manager. Carbon supports aliases, which do their best to resolve files even if they are moved or renamed. These are the same alias files created by the Finder.

• How to use the Carbon APIs to write out a simple QuickTime movie. The QuickTime API set can be challenging to work with because of its size. But with a little patience, and an understanding of Carbon programming conventions and the QuickDraw drawing library, you can integrate QuickTime into your applications.

In the next chapter, you learn about various ...