dave@emerald.PRC.Unisys.COM (David Lee Matuszek) (02/01/89)
I am thinking about purchasing Prototyper, by SmetherBarnes. Is this any good? Is there something better? I use Lightspeed Pascal (the version just before the current expensive upgrade--I forget the number). I have read the Chernikoff books and understood them well enough to get a simple interface largely written, but I don't have Inside Mac and, more importantly, I don't have a lot of time to spend with my Mac. Prototyper promises to let me build my interface in a Mac-like manner, then produce Pascal code I can use in my program. Does it deliver? I found TransSkel to be less useful than Chernikoff's well-documented code--is Prototyper just another TransSkel? A recent ad says "After starting Prototyper last night at 11pm, by 2am this morning I had generated 3/4 of a megabyte of user interface source code." I personally don't *want* 3/4 meg of source code--does anyone know if this is reasonably compact code, or does Prototyper just spew out lots of redundant code? All opinions are welcome. Only YOU can prevent bad purchases! Please reply directly to me; I will summarize to the net if I accumulate enough information. aTdHvAaNnKcSe -- Dave Matuszek (dave@prc.unisys.com) -- Unisys Corp. / Paoli Research Center / PO Box 517 / Paoli PA 19301 -- Standard disclaimer: Any resemblance between my opinions and those of my employer is strictly coincidental.
jwhitnell@cup.portal.com (Jerry D Whitnell) (02/03/89)
dave@emerald.PRC.Unisys.COM (David Lee Matuszek) writes... |I am thinking about purchasing Prototyper, by SmetherBarnes. Is this |any good? Is there something better? I have Prototyper 1.0 and am a beta site for 2.0. In general, it delivers what it promises and is relativly bug free (at least the 1.0 is, I can't comment on the quality of the beta 2.0). There was a similar product annoucned at MacWorld (at least I picked up a brochure for it), but I have not seen the product itself. I'd recommend to all beginning Mac programmers and any non-beginners who either need to put together quick-and-dirty-but-Mac-pretty applications or who like to play with the user interfaces of their programs before casting them in concrete code. As an example, I used it on a recent contract that needed to be done quickly. The buyers were even willing to have a stdio interface if it would take less time, but with Prototyper I was able to throw together a real Mac interface and generate code in 4 hours. |Prototyper promises to let me build my interface in a Mac-like manner, |then produce Pascal code I can use in my program. Does it deliver? In Prototyper, you basically draw your interface. You have one window that you specify your menus in (in 2.0 they can be heirarchical) by typing in the titles of each menu and the items in the menu. They give you default Apple, File and Edit menus to start with, which you can edit. You can also have create any number of windows, which you can specify as normal windows, dialogs or alerts. You can then add to these windows, using a MacDraw-style palette interface, buttons, check boxs, radio buttons, lists, lines, pictures, static text and editable text. You can link the buttons to open other windows or dialogs and also link menu items to open and close windows. Version 2.0 will also support pop-up menus and provides a more complete set of commands for the links. You can then "run" your interface to see what it looks like. This is basically a simple interpretor built into Prototyper that interprets your prototype. The links tell the interpretor what to do when you select a menu item or click on a button. Once you are satisfied with your interface, you can then generate the Pascal code. The source code includes the main loop, control routines for the dialog boxes and alert boxs and code to handle the menus. It also generates resources in both RMaker and binary form. The code generated is reasonably good and requires little modification. There are place-holders where you'll need to add the code that does the real work, but these are commented so you can find them. The code is specific to your application so there is little redundent code. Version 2.0 will include C code generators as well as Pascal. Version 2.0 is due out RSN. I recommend, however, you buy 1.0 and upgrade to 2.0 as 2.0 will have a major price increase attached to it. -- Jerry Whitnell Several Species of Small Furry jwhitnell@cup.portal.com Animals Gathered Together in a ..!sun!cup.portal.com!jwhitnell Cave and Grooving with a PICT.
rae@geaclib.UUCP (Reid Ellis) (02/03/89)
dave@emerald.PRC.Unisys.COM (David Lee Matuszek) writes: |I am thinking about purchasing Prototyper, by SmetherBarnes. Is this |any good? Is there something better? Warning: as of the last time I looked, Prototyper did not handle the "newer" bits of the Macintosh user interface like popup menus, hier- archical menus, and tear-off menus. Also, it only created Pascal code. Now you are using Pascal, so that's ok. I played with it a bit in June of last year and it seemed primitive, sort of archaic in what it would and would not handle. Of course, if your needs are simple, this may be the program for you. Personally, I was very disappointed with the product. But then again, I know of no better alternate for you to try.. Reid
viking@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (02/04/89)
>dave@emerald.PRC.Unisys.COM (David Lee Matuszek) writes:> >|I am thinking about purchasing Prototyper, by SmetherBarnes. Is this >|any good? Is there something better? > >Warning: as of the last time I looked, Prototyper did not handle the >"newer" bits of the Macintosh user interface like popup menus, hier- >archical menus, and tear-off menus. Also, it only created Pascal code. >Now you are using Pascal, so that's ok. The new version 2.0 handles these constructs and will produce code for both Pascal *and* C (LightSpeed and MPW). I have heard nothing but good reports from my developer friends, but I have no personal experience with the product yet. (I've just ordered a copy myself.) Jon Backstrom Computer Science Department Indiana University
holland@m2.csc.ti.com (Fred Hollander) (02/04/89)
In article <3635@geaclib.UUCP> rae@geaclib.UUCP (Reid Ellis) writes: >dave@emerald.PRC.Unisys.COM (David Lee Matuszek) writes: >|I am thinking about purchasing Prototyper, by SmetherBarnes. Is this >|any good? Is there something better? > >Warning: as of the last time I looked, Prototyper did not handle the >"newer" bits of the Macintosh user interface like popup menus, hier- >archical menus, and tear-off menus. Also, it only created Pascal code >Now you are using Pascal, so that's ok. Prototyper 2 is supposedly shipping *now*. It handles popup and hierarchical menus - I didn't think tear-off menus were part of the Mac interface. They've also cleaned up their interface - the dialog designer for example. And it generates "C" code including LSC and MPW. > >I played with it a bit in June of last year and it seemed primitive, sort of >archaic in what it would and would not handle. Of course, if your needs >are simple, this may be the program for you. Personally, I was very >disappointed with the product. But then again, I know of no better >alternate for you to try.. > >Reid I've never used the code it generated as I don't program in Pascal. But, it sure is a time-saver for prototyping. I generated an interface and showed it to a number of people for comments before I started coding. They simulate the interface you generated as if it was a running application. And the resource file was easier to generate than using ResEdit. I hope to use the code with the new version but, I can't comment yet... Waiting for my upgrade, Fred Hollander Computer Science Center Texas Instruments, Inc. hollander@ti.com The above statements are my own and not representative of Texas Instruments.
skl@koko.UUCP (Scott Luther) (02/08/89)
You should look into MacApp if you don't have a lot of time for development it's a pretty good deal. You must know a bit about Object Oriented programming but once you've looked at a few examples it shouldn't be toooo much of a problem. Prototyper seems o.k. I have used it a little bit to prepare demos of what a future product was going to look like. We didn't reuse any of the code though. I will say that the souce seems weel documentd and generally pretty good (in a generic kind of way). I did have problems converting some of the source to MPW with units that had numbers in the Uses statments. Theres a good book by Kurt Schumucker about MacApp entitled "object oriented programming" you should check it out. Hope this helps... +Scott+
danm@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Daniel Milliron) (02/11/89)
In article <3635@geaclib.UUCP>, rae@geaclib.UUCP (Reid Ellis) writes: > Warning: as of the last time I looked, Prototyper did not handle the > "newer" bits of the Macintosh user interface like popup menus, hier- > archical menus, and tear-off menus. Also, it only created Pascal code. > Now you are using Pascal, so that's ok. > > I played with it a bit in June of last year and it seemed primitive, sort of > archaic in what it would and would not handle. Of course, if your needs > are simple, this may be the program for you. Personally, I was very > disappointed with the product. But then again, I know of no better > alternate for you to try.. > > Reid I bought the original version and have ordered the upgrade to version 2.0, which handles popup menus, hierarchal menus, the C language, and has a cleaner user interface. I program in C, but bought the Pascal-only version anyway. I wrote one fairly large application with Prototyper, and ended up translating from Pascal to C. I had never written a Mac application. My verdict: Proto- typer saved me weeks of trouble. I *highly* recommend the program. Since it is fairly inexpensive (new version lists at $295 = 6 hours of programming time @ $50/hr.), and since it does not inhibit a programmer by constraining him to any software architecture, the only reason I can see for not using Prototyper is if a person either is capable of generating equivalent code in similar time or enjoys creating the low-level program code of a user interface. An analogous issue is the high-level vs. assembly language programming debate, although in the case of interface builders, the speed of execution penalty is negligable. But wait, there's an added bonus. With Prototyper, you get to experiment with user interface options at a speed that is at least an order of magnitude greater than if you were hand-coding and using some other resource editor. Dan Milliron Disclaimer: I have no relationship with Smethers Barnes besides being a customer.
tmyers@orion.cf.uci.edu (Tracy Myers) (02/12/89)
In article <3768@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM> danm@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Daniel Milliron) writes: > > >But wait, there's an added bonus. With Prototyper, you get to experiment with >user interface options at a speed that is at least an order of magnitude >greater than if you were hand-coding and using some other resource editor. > >Dan Milliron > I have just received my prototyper upgrade, and have not had enough time with it to form an informed opinion of v2.0. But, so far so good. I have found Prototyper to be a very effective tool in learning how to handle the user interface stuff. Instead of getting one of the canned examples that come with every development system, you can make your own. Want to find out how to do radio buttons? Just do a prototype and generate the code. You can have exactly what you want in the program (within the limits of Prototyper). You don't have to wade through a large example to find the code you are interested in. The code is pretty thuroughly commented and easy to follow. It has been very helpful in my effort to learn the interface.