[comp.sys.next] Prototyping

rbp@investor.pgh.pa.us (Bob Peirce #305) (12/23/90)

I don't have a machine yet, so if it is in TFM please tell me where and
I will look when I get it.  In the meantime, I had a demo on IB and was
quite impressed.  However, it seems to require Objective C while I come
from a background of cobbling things together out of Unix utilities and
only going to C when I need speed or some functionality I can't get from
one of the utilities.  So, can I do this under IB on the NeXT and how?

Can clicking on a button or whatever run a shell script or must it run
Objective C code?  This is doubly important for the simple reason that I
don't know zip about Objective C and I suspect it will take a while to
learn.

-- 
Bob Peirce, Pittsburgh, PA				  412-471-5320
...!uunet!pitt!investor!rbp			rbp@investor.pgh.pa.us

wiml@milton.u.washington.edu (William Lewis) (12/25/90)

In article <1990Dec23.020711.22930@investor.pgh.pa.us> rbp@investor.pgh.pa.us (Bob Peirce #305) writes:
>Can clicking on a button or whatever run a shell script or must it run
>Objective C code?  This is doubly important for the simple reason that I
>don't know zip about Objective C and I suspect it will take a while to
>learn.

  Well, clicking on a button must run Obj-C code, but that code could
just be a system() call or something. Objective-C is a superset of
plain old ANSI C, and in fact Interface Builder will generate a
'skeleton' for you so you don't even have to use Obj-C features at all
if you don't want to do anything complicated involving the GUI.
(Actually, it seems to me it should be possible to write an application
that just loads a specified .NIB file, and accepts target messages from
objects, calling shell scripts as appropriate --- it could be used with
multiple .NIB files -- sort of a graphical shell... Hmmmm ...)


-- 
 wiml@milton.acs.washington.edu       Seattle, Washington   
     (William Lewis)   |  47 41' 15" N   122 42' 58" W  
"These 2 cents will cost the net thousands upon thousands of 
dollars to send everywhere. Are you sure you want to do this?"