Learning Carbon is designed to get you programming right away in Carbon™, one of two APIs (Application Programmer Interfaces) Macintosh® programmers can use to write applications that run native in Mac® OS X. Using Carbon, you don't have to rewrite your Mac OS programs entirely to get them to take advantage of the new features in Mac OS X. Instead, all you have to rewrite is the 10 to 20 percent of the code that can't be translated to OS X. For C programmers, Apple's Carbon is the essential building block for applications on Mac OS X. With Carbon, you can use simple, traditional C interfaces to create world-class applications for a world-class operating system. After orienting you with a detailed tour of a Carbon application, Learning Carbon walks you through the entire process of designing and creating a complete Carbon application called Moon Travel Planner. Along the way, you'll be introduced to two pivotal development tools: Project Builder and Interface Builder. You'll learn key concepts about Carbon and Mac OS X programming, including event management, resource handling, and bundle anatomy. And you'll get direct, hands-on instruction on how to implement essential application tasks, such as managing windows, printing documents, opening and saving files, creating and responding to menu commands, providing user help, and organizing your application for easy localization in multiple countries and languages. After finishing this book, you'll be ready to start writing your own Carbon applications. Written by Apple insiders with access to engineers deeply involved in creating Mac OS X, Learning Carbon brings you information that's not available anywhere else, to get you in on the ground floor of the exciting new Mac OS X application development market.

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Learning Carbon Review,  July 01 2002
Submitted by Josh Gilbert   [Respond | View]

I've had a few years of experience with Cocoa and Objective-C (since OS X server 1.0). Recently I needed to perform some very simple tasks in Carbon as Cocoa's counterparts are currently not functional. I've used Cocoa (and it is my Framework of choice) however I needed to implement a few minor Carbon elements into an application. Despite the reviews of other readers I think a few trivial examples would have helped beginners a lot more than the single project. The chapter on event handling could have been much more extensive. It was helpful but not a great way to learn Carbon programming. I've learned more from browsing the Apple provided documentaion (which this book heavily borrows from). And a lack of complete application source code was a nail in the coffin. I mean, great, teach us by bits and pieces and don't show us the entire source for the app. Thankfully I was able to download it from O'Reilly and pick out the bits and pieces I really needed. I didn't want to learn how to write a whole app in Carbon - I wanted to learn how to utilize some features of Carbon for use in Cocoa. Maybe a book on wrapping Carbon with Cocoa or something would have been more along the lines of what I needed but this was about all that was available and sadly it had quite a few shortcomings. It's a great book for just learning Carbon all by itself but for those Cocoa programmers wishing to access features not yet available in Cocoa (which Apple claims is a peer API) the Apple provided docs may be good enough.


Learning Carbon Review,  March 18 2002
Submitted by Michael Amorose   [Respond | View]

As an 11-year Mac software development veteran, i can recommend this book to people new to Mac programming. While it doesn't cover Carbon comprehensively, it does cover the basics. The focus is to learn Project Builder and Interface Builder, and to get a simple app up and running - there are other books out there that delve into details. I suggest you read this book, then Apple's new Inside Mac OS X series, then possbily Dan Parks Sydow's "MacOS X Programming" which is also a Carbon book, the "Carbon Programming" which is an extensive, in-depth Carbon book. There are a few problems with Learning Carbon such as the fact that Apple has already rev'ed the OS X development tools since this first edition was published. So a few of the things in the examples are a little out of date. But overall you will be able to get up to speed quickly with this book.


Learning Carbon Review,  October 03 2001
Submitted by Joey Edelstein   [Respond | View]

Not the right place to start learning Mac programming!



While this may be a good book for experienced Mac programmers that want to write code for carbon, it is woefully in adequate for Mac beginners despite its claims otherwise. I am a very experienced Windows programmer starting out the in the Mac world and the book gave me very little to go on. It is missing very basic information like how to create a window with scroll bars or how to create a modal dialog and obtain data from its controls.




Learning Carbon Review,  August 23 2001
Submitted by Pat Jensen   [Respond | View]

As a UNIX user new to Mac OS X and interested in development, I chose to take the Carbon route. Carbon consists of Apple's time tested APIs that are cross-compatible with OS 9 and OS 10. O'Reilly's Carbon book was excellent and using it and my intermediate C skills, I was able to get my feet wet and start writing Carbon applications.

I did not want to take the object-oriented route and invest time in learning new APIs as well as new language constructs like Cocoa or Java and I found this book to be a great resource. It contains a great Moon Planner tutorial which will help build understanding of the Carbon APIs as well as tutorials on how to use the Mac OS X development tools.

I would suggest new Carbon users also purchase the Mac OS X System Overview book from Apple, as it drills into application installation, frameworks and more. Great book!


Learning Carbon Review,  June 07 2001
Submitted by Warren Hardy   [Respond | View]



I am very impressed with this book, it is really easy to follow, I have been trying to implement the Moon Travel Planner, there are some minor technical problems with the code.

It would be good for a chapter on the structure of the Project Builder and how it is setup for finding header files etc.

<By far the mt most educational book for getting started with developing on not only the new Mac OS X but also ith Apple in general.


Learning Carbon Review,  June 01 2001
Submitted by Noel Fegan   [Respond | View]

OK I just found the Errata section, so I retract my earlier comment about not having a place to provide feedback.


Learning Carbon Review,  June 01 2001
Submitted by Noel Fegan   [Respond | View]

I have been a Windows developer for many years, and I am new to Mac programming. Yet, I found this book very understandable. The use of the Moon Travel Planner example, and the way in which this same example is carried through the book was a good approach, rather than having lots of unrelated trivial examples.

The only negative comment I have is that I couldn't find any way to provide feedback to the authors. I found a number of small typos and a possible coding mistake (a typical 'goto' gotcha) that I would like to send on to the authors.

Noel

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