macOS Pages is Carbon

Hi,

I've heard much about iWork, being the Carbon-AppleWorks replacement. However, I tried it out recently, and it really felt like Cocoa, smooth and nice. Just for fun, I tried "otool -L path-to-pages" and discovered that it is indeed a Carbon application. Surprise. Does this mean that Carbon and Cocoa is as good as equal in these days? Becase I really can't tell from its interface!

Any thoughts?

The thing is that I perfer C++ to ObjC, but I've disliked Carbon since Apple made it a second class citizen! But since Pages feel just like Cocoa, and intergrates very good into Keynote (which is Cocoa) I've got new hope for Carbon! Why can't they just be one?

But still...

Cocoa is OS X only, and Carbon is cross-platform. I've noticed how much slower Carbon apps are compared to Classic apps in OS 9, not only because they were re-engineered. Even brand new Carbon apps doesn't feel as snappy as Classic apps.

Further, OS X only Carbon apps still doesn't feel as fast as Cocoa apps, even though the C/C++ language should make them faster compared to ObjC. I suspect this is since Carbon is required to operate both on a non-threaded enviornment such as OS9, and multithreaded. Further, it need UI wrappers to adopt itself to OS9/OSX.

I which we could get a OSX only Carbon, or a C++ Cocoa. OS X and it's apps really needs to get snappier...

It isn't linked to Cocoa...

I understand what you say, but still, it isn't linked to Cocoa. AppKit and Nib-files can be used by Carbon too, i think.

robbieduncan said:

I think Pages is Cocoa. I have just installed an iWork '05 trial and got this from otool -L:

Code:

jay:/Applications/iWork/Pages.app/Contents/MacOS robbie$ otool -L Pages 
Pages:
        /System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Versions/C/AppKit (compatibility version 45.0.0, current version 743.24.0)
        /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/ApplicationServices (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 19.0.0)
        /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Versions/A/CoreFoundation (compatibility version 150.0.0, current version 299.31.0)
        /System/Library/Frameworks/Foundation.framework/Versions/C/Foundation (compatibility version 300.0.0, current version 500.56.0)
        /System/Library/Frameworks/AddressBook.framework/Versions/A/AddressBook (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 321.0.0)
        /System/Library/Frameworks/SystemConfiguration.framework/Versions/A/SystemConfiguration (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 84.6.0)
        @executable_path/../Frameworks/SFStyles.framework/Versions/A/SFStyles (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
        @executable_path/../Frameworks/SFUtility.framework/Versions/A/SFUtility (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
        @executable_path/../Frameworks/SFDrawables.framework/Versions/A/SFDrawables (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
        @executable_path/../Frameworks/SFWordProcessing.framework/Versions/A/SFWordProcessing (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
        @executable_path/../Frameworks/SFControls.framework/Versions/A/SFControls (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
        @executable_path/../Frameworks/SFArchiving.framework/Versions/A/SFArchiving (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
        @executable_path/../Frameworks/libiconv.framework/Versions/1.8/libiconv (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
        @executable_path/../Frameworks/libxml.framework/Versions/2.6.6/libxml (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
        @executable_path/../Frameworks/SFRendering.framework/Versions/A/SFRendering (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
        @executable_path/../Frameworks/SFProofReader.framework/Versions/A/SFProofReader (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
        @executable_path/../Frameworks/SFTables.framework/Versions/A/SFTables (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
        @executable_path/../Frameworks/SFPartitions.framework/Versions/A/SFPartitions (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
        /System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Carbon (compatibility version 2.0.0, current version 128.0.0)
        @executable_path/../Frameworks/SFInspectors.framework/Versions/A/SFInspectors (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
        @executable_path/../Frameworks/SFCharts.framework/Versions/A/SFCharts (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
        @executable_path/../Frameworks/SFMovie.framework/Versions/A/SFMovie (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
        @executable_path/../Frameworks/SFAnimation.framework/Versions/A/SFAnimation (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
        @executable_path/../Frameworks/Dennis.framework/Versions/A/Dennis (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
        @executable_path/../Frameworks/MediaBrowser.framework/Versions/A/MediaBrowser (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
        @executable_path/../Frameworks/SFLicense.framework/Versions/A/SFLicense (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
        /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 71.1.1)

Not the first one: AppKit. That's Cocoa. Yes it links to Carbon but this will be for stuff that is not yet in Cocoa. 99% of the app is Cocoa. Some of my Cocoa apps link to Carbon but all the important bits are Cocoa.

Further proof can be found in the Info.plist file (snipped):

Code:

        <key>NSMainNibFile</key>
        <string>Pages</string>
        <key>NSPrincipalClass</key>
        <string>SLApplication</string>

These keys are not found in Carbon apps (check iTunes for example).

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