Re: [Texmacs-dev] Cocoa backend

[Massimiliano Gubinelli]

I've made an archive of my current development directory. It includes  
a TeXmacs source tree since I've made some modifications to the source.
A priori it must compile more or less direclty under Mac (there is an  
Xcode project - I use Xcode 2.4).
It would be interesting if somebody with some experience would like  
to try to compile it in GNUstep.

You can find it at

http://homepage.mac.com/mgubi/TeXmacs/FileSharing4.html

it is called TM.tar.gz. It is just to give an idea to the curious. I  
want to made other changes before releasing something.


On 18 Dec 2006, at 20:04, Felix Breuer wrote:

> On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 00:04:25 +0100, Massimiliano Gubinelli  
> <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Writing the MacOSX "PS-device" it has not been too difficult. It has
> > been enough to map X11 calls to the analogous calls in Cocoa. To
> > reimplement the device in Cairo or directly in OpenGL should be a
> > matter of a week or less.
>
> How did you go about reimplementing the backend in Cocoa? Did you
> sit down for a straight week mapping all the X calls to Cocoa
> and only compiled the whole thing after the conversion was done?
> Or did you find a way to do the conversion incrementally, compiling
> and testing intermediate versions?

No. You must proceed more or less one big step. You can leave back  
some details (like shadow device, baloons, popup windows). But the PS  
device must be implemented in block. I just copied the X version,  
commentend the X calls and replaced them by corresponding Cocoa  
calls. For the device it proceeded quite straigforwardly you just  
need to be able to draw images, lines, change color, etc... . Xcode  
is awesome because you can use a feature called Fix & Continue where  
you just modify the code on the fly, recompile and test the new  
implementation without quitting the running app. This was mostly  
useful when I did wrong coordinate conversions.

Currently the port size is  2500 lines of ObjC++.


> > I think that one of my remarks has not been properly appreciated:
> > this "port" run ALSO on Linux if one is willing to use GNUstep
> > libraries (and on Windows).
>
> I myself am fine with the "home-made" GUI TeXmacs uses. My main
> interest in a Cairo/OpenGL backend is the vision of using
> TeXmacs as a typesetting/text rendering library for other
> Cairo/OpenGL apps. I am very curious about trying your converted
> version of TeXmacs on GNUstep, though :)

It would be very interesting to have the core TeXmacs well separated  
from the UI. Maybe going toward a better compliance with the model- 
view-controller pattern would help transitioning by gradual  
modifications.
This would leave me the freedom to implement a full Cocoa app on top  
of texmacs layout engine.

Max

> Felix
>
>
>
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