is mathematica cocoa?

L

lethe

Registered
i have been wondering about this for a while.

i just read that mathematica was originally developed on NeXTSTEP. and if you look at wolframs website, you will see that they still list NeXTSTEP as a supported OS. this would lead me to believe that it would be very easy for them to turn their NeXTSTEP code into a cocoa-ized version for OSX. yet somehow i suspect that it is carbon. can anyone confirm or deny this?

on a side note, how exactly can you tell that an app is carbon? is the fact that it is not a .app directory necessary and sufficient?
 
Carbon apps can be .apps too, just look at Finder.. well that's more of a hybrid, but still..

I believe it is a Cocoa app because of how the guy was bragging onstage that Mac OS X gave them so many possibilities thanks to Quartz and QuickTime and all the other Cocoa goodies that only OS X offers. And yes, since it runs on NeXTStep, chances are they had to do very little work to port it.
 
so can someone tell me a criterion for distinguishing a carbon app from a cocoa?

maybe there is no way to tell a well designed carbon app from a cocoa app, except to look at the source code.

if there is an external difference, someone tell me what it is!
 
It is not difficult to see if your app is carbon

If there is anywhere an blinking default button just position the cursor somewhere where is no control - then press the mousebutton and keep it - if the button stops to animate it’s carbon - or else it’s cocoa!
 
Another way to figure out if an application is Cocoa/Carbon is to press the mouse down on a scroll arrow, and still holding it, drag the mouse over the other arrow. If the other arrow highlights and it starts scrolling in that direction, it's a Cocoa app. Otherwise, Carbon!
 
Or you can just check to see if any of the services in the services menu work. At of 10.1.x, only Cocoa apps can use services.
 
Actually, I think some of the more gifted mach-o programmers can make services work with their apps :)
 
so in other words, there is no obvious way, other than looking at the source code, to tell for sure that it is cocoa.

checking for OS features that are only available to cocoa apps works, but only until carbon gets added those features, and only if your carbon app has the properties that you can check.

but thanks for the replies
 
This was recently posted on macosxhints.com:

A terribly simple of way of telling whether an application is Cocoa or not...

While the application is in the backround, but still visible on the screen, hold down the command key and try to manipulate any user interface element (scroll bar, popup menu, it doesn't matter). If the application stays in the background, it's Cocoa
Click to expand...
 
I don't think booting into 9 will work. Not all carbon apps work in 9, I found out the hard way. It seems some carbon apps come in two flavors: an os 9 flavor and an os x flavor. I don't understand why, but I don't care. I don't use OS 9. OS X is why I got a Mac again.

-Rob
 
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