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Cocoa Programming/Application Kit

< Cocoa Programming

Overview

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When programming in Cocoa there are two core frameworks that the developer can use:

  • Foundation Framework
  • Application Framework

The Application Framework is more commonly referred to as the Application Kit or just AppKit. It provides developers with APIs that simplify commonly performed programming tasks related primarily to the GUI and the elements that make up the GUI (e.g. menus, windows, icons, buttons, etc.).

Using AppKit

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To use AppKit the developer must use a programming or scripting language that is capable of interacting with the classes, functions and APIs that make up Appkit. The most obvious choice is Objective-C as this is the language in which Cocoa is written. Also natively supported is AppleScript. Other C based programming languages can also be used (with some constraints) while Python, Ruby and Tcl are three scripting languages that can be interfaced to Cocoa.

References

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  • [1] - Apple "The Cocoa Frameworks"
  • [2] - "Cocoa Language Options" by Scott Anguish, Erik Buck and Donald Yacktman
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