Mac OS X Porting - Native Controls
Native Controls
Introduction
The purpose of this article is to present our current knowledge and progress of the implementation of native controls in the native Mac OS X version of OpenOffice.org. Our goal by implementing native controls is to remove the win32 look as much as possible and replace it by the Aqua look and feel using the Carbon API.
Apple Documentation and References
Tradeoff between the Appearance Manager and HITheme
Apple provides an easy way to change a custom user interface to an aqua interface, by using the Appearance Manager. This API was developed for Mac OS 8 and 9, it is centered around QuickDraw. The appearance manager is less and less supported by Apple and any implementation needs to be replaced with the HIToolbox version: HITheme. The problem with HITheme is that its implementation started on Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) and has since gone under many revisions and new functions have been added. So