ACCELA / News: Recent posts

The most significant change in this release is that the XWrapper and XRefCountObject templates have been refactored to have two constructors instead of one with a boolean flag. This is a sweeping change, but it does make things cleaner and easier to read.

Classes have also been added to add basic support for Cocoa bindings in Carbon controls, where the bindings can be specified in the nib using control properties.... read more

The CVS repository has been imported into Subversion, and I just finished checking in some minor changes directly in Subversion, which makes it official. I have disabled the CVS item in the project page menu, though the CVS repository itself is still available.

The ACCELA 3-06 release package includes numerous smaller changes, but most significant is the addition of the document management and scripting classes. They include fully compliant usage of Navigation Services dialogs, AppleScript recordability, and an "Open Recent" menu with all the features of the Cocoa version.

A new ACCELA release package has been posted. Major changes include:
- AAutoToolbar can now create custom toolbar items by loading controls from a nib.
- XRefCountObject now uses a policy class to define its retain/release callbacks.
- Various changes for compiling in GCC 4.

Coming up next:
- Application framework classes, with basic document handling and scriptabliity.
- Revamped error handling.
- More samples.

The 3-1-04 release of ACCELA has been posted. Highlights of this release include HeaderDoc comments for many classes, functional HIObject and toolbar classes, and removal of the PowerPlant dependency in the Navigation Services classes.

HeaderDoc documentation has also been added to the project web pages:
http://accela.sourceforge.net/docs/

I just successfully compiled all the ACCELA files in Xcode, with just a few warnings. In fact, it doesn't complain about the use of CThrownResult like the previous version did. The new warnings are caused by the introduction of CFLocaleRef in some CFString functions, replacing previously void* parameters.

I am thinking about how to do a WebKit wrapper. The problem is that the WebKit C API is extremely minimal; once the object is created you have to do everything in Objective C. Apple has promised to add more C calls (whether by 10.3 final I don't know), but of course that means backward compatibility issues.

I have added AToolbar and AAutoToolbar classes, which also involved getting AHIObject and AView working.

AAutoToolbar is a class which reads its toolbar configuration (item list, allowed items, and default items) from an xml file. A sample application, in the new Test Apps folder, shows how to use it.

The sample toolbar app includes both CodeWarrior and ProjectBuilder projects, and changes were made to various files to get them to compile in PB.

I've added a mailing list which will automatically send reports on all CVS commits, for those who want to be notified when any ACCELA files have changed.

http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/accela-cvs

I recommend digest mode, since a message is sent for every commit.

I had originally chosen the LGPL license for ACCELA, but I just took a closer look and found something that I decided I don't like.

The LGPL says: "If you link other code with the library, you must provide complete object files to the recipients, so that they can relink them with the library after making changes to the library and recompiling it."

That means if you build an app with ACCELA, you must separate out the binary files in case someone wants to run your app with a modified version of ACCELA. I didn't realize this when I first chose LGPL, and I think it's pretty unlikely that any user would want to take advantage of that requirement (given the nature of this particular library), so I changed the license.... read more