TextEdit 1.4

TextEdit depends heavily on the Cocoa frameworks for it's abilities. Taking the new version and trying to run it on an old OS won't work. For example all the new table stuff is in the Cocoa AppKit, not in TextEdit itself.

I think there are two parts of this statement which should be addressed...

robbieduncan said:

Taking the new version and trying to run it on an old OS won't work.

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TextEdit is a bundled app with the operating system and is tied to the operating system version... and a version that ships with one OS isn't going to run on an earlier version.

And many bundled apps that came with earlier versions of the operating system are equally limited and can not be run on later versions either (HTMLEdit and Quartz Composer are two such examples).

TextEdit depends heavily on the Cocoa frameworks for it's abilities.

and​

For example all the new table stuff is in the Cocoa AppKit, not in TextEdit itself.

Click to expand...

The table stuff in the Cocoa App kit was developed for use in TextEdit 1.3 that came with Mac OS X v10.3... but the table stuff does not require 10.3.

Andrew Stone of Stone Design works very closely with Apple on Cocoa elements. And while Apple was developing the table elements that were going to be used in TextEdit 1.3 he was using the same stuff to add tables to Create. The table tools in Create (based on the same table tools in TextEdit 1.3) work just fine in Mac OS X v10.2.


Just thought I would point that out.

RacerX said:

The table stuff in the Cocoa App kit was developed for use in TextEdit 1.3 that came with Mac OS X v10.3... but the table stuff does not require 10.3.

Andrew Stone of Stone Design works very closely with Apple on Cocoa elements. And while Apple was developing the table elements that were going to be used in TextEdit 1.3 he was using the same stuff to add tables to Create. The table tools in Create (based on the same table tools in TextEdit 1.3) work just fine in Mac OS X v10.2.


Just thought I would point that out.

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I stand by what I said. The documentation says that the table handling in NSText* classes was added in 10.4. Create may well use this in 10.4 and fall back on it's own implementation for 10.2&10.3 but TextEdit certainly won't do that and will fail to run do to unresolved symbols in the library.

robbieduncan said:

Create may well use this in 10.4 and fall back on it's own implementation for 10.2&10.3...

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So what you are saying is that we can credit the creation of NSTableView to Andrew?

😱 Wow, he is more impressive than I had thought.

RacerX said:

So what you are saying is that we can credit the creation of NSTableView to Andrew?

😱 Wow, he is more impressive than I had thought.

Click to expand...

It's nothing to do with NSTableView. Tables in TextEdit are NSTextTable objects which are displayed in NSTextView. NSTableView predates all versions of OSX (it comes directly from NextStep). NSTextTable is new in 10.4.

robbieduncan said:

NSTableView predates all versions of OSX (it comes directly from NextStep).

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And has been updated with almost every version of OPENSTEP, Rhapsody and Mac OS X (including new abilities added in 10.4)... Not much of a surprise there, I've been seeing NSTableView for years.

But you said that Create must fall back on it's own implementation... so I guess you don't have much history using this because it didn't sound like you knew about it if you thought that a Cocoa developer would have to create their own implementation.

🙄

Of course the thing that puzzles me is that you said it comes directly from NextStep. I don't recall NSTableView being in NEXTSTEP. The first time I recall hearing about it was in the development of the OpenStep specification. And the first time I can recall seeing it was in OPENSTEP 4.1 (I didn't have OPENSTEP 4.0).

If you used NSTableView in "NextStep"* then you have a longer history in this stuff than I do.

Besides, you said:I was pointing out that a lot of the table stuff that is new is feature enhancements of stuff that already existed (there are new features for NSTableView in 10.4 too) that don't break full apps on older systems.

Of course I would still like to know why you thought someone would need their own implementation of tables if you already knew about NSTableView.




Note: "NextStep" has never been used as a name by NeXT or Apple, there was NeXTstep, NeXTStep, NeXTSTEP and NEXTSTEP though, and OPENSTEP was the name of version 4 of the NeXT operating system while OpenStep was the APIs.