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/****************************************************************************
**
** Copyright (C) 2011 Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiary(-ies).
** All rights reserved.
** Contact: Nokia Corporation (qt-info@nokia.com)
**
** This file is part of the documentation of the Qt Toolkit.
**
** $QT_BEGIN_LICENSE:FDL$
** No Commercial Usage
** This file contains pre-release code and may not be distributed.
** You may use this file in accordance with the terms and conditions
** contained in the Technology Preview License Agreement accompanying
** this package.
**
** GNU Free Documentation License
** Alternatively, this file may be used under the terms of the GNU Free
** Documentation License version 1.3 as published by the Free Software
** Foundation and appearing in the file included in the packaging of this
** file.
**
** If you have questions regarding the use of this file, please contact
** Nokia at qt-info@nokia.com.
** $QT_END_LICENSE$
**
****************************************************************************/
/*!
\page qtmac-as-native.html
\title Qt is Mac OS X Native
\brief An explanation of Qt's native features on Mac OS X.
\ingroup platform-specific
This document explains what makes an application native on Mac OS X.
It shows the areas where Qt is compliant, and the grey areas where
compliance is more questionable. (See also the document
\l{mac-differences.html}{Qt for Mac OS X - Specific Issues}.)
Normally when referring to a native Mac application, one really means an
application that talks directly to the underlying window system, rather
than one that uses some intermediary (for example Apple's X11 server, or a
web browser). Qt applications run as first class citizens, just like
Cocoa, and Carbon applications. In fact, we use Carbon and HIView
internally to communicate with OS X.
When an application is running as a first class citizen, it means that
it can interact with specific components of the Mac OS X experience:
\tableofcontents
\section1 The Global Menu Bar
Qt does this via the QMenuBar abstraction. Mac users expect to
have a menu bar at the top of the screen and Qt honors this.
Additionally, users expect certain conventions to be respected, for
example the application menu should contain About, Preferences,
Quit, etc. Qt handles this automatically, although it does not
provide a means of interacting directly with the application menu.
(By doing this automatically, Qt makes it easier to port Qt
applications to other platforms.)
\section1 Aqua
This is a critical piece of Mac OS X (documentation can be found at
\l{http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/index.html}).
It is a huge topic, but the most important guidelines for GUI
design are probably these:
\list
\i \e{Aqua look}
As with Cocoa/Carbon, Qt provides widgets that look like those
described in the Human Interface Descriptions. Qt's widgets use
Appearance Manager on Mac OS X 10.2 and the new HIThemes on Mac OS X 10.3
and higher to implement the look, in other words we use Apple's own API's
for doing the rendering.
\i \e{Aqua feel}
This is a bit more subjective, but certainly Qt strives to
provide the same feel as any Mac OS X application (and we
consider situations where it doesn't achieve this to be bugs).
Of course Qt has other concerns to bear in mind, especially
remaining cross-platform. Some "baggage" that Qt carries is in
an effort to provide a widget on a platform for which an
equivelant doesn't exist, or so that a single API can be used to
do something, even if the API doesn't make entire sense for a
specific widget.
\i \e{Aqua guides}
This is the most subjective, but there are many suggestions and
guidelines in the Aqua style guidelines. This is the area where Qt is
of least assistance. The decisions that must be made to conform (widget
sizes, widget layouts with respect to other widgets, window margins,
placement of OK and Cancel, etc) must be made based on the user
experience demanded by your application. If your user base is small or
mostly comes from the Windows or Unix worlds, these are minor issues much
less important than trying to make a mass market product. Qt for Mac OS X
is fully API compatible with Qt for Windows and X11, but Mac OS X is a
significantly different platform to Windows and some special
considerations must be made based on your audience.
\endlist
\section1 Dock
Interaction with the dock is possible. The icon can be set by calling
QWidget::setWindowIcon() on the main window in your application. The
setWindowIcon() call can be made as often as necessary, providing an
icon that can be easily updated.
\omit
It is also possible to set a QMenu as the dock menu through the use of the
qt_mac_set_dock_menu() function.
\endomit
\section1 Accessiblity
Although many users never use this, some users will only interact with your
applications via assistive devices. With Qt the aim is to make this
automatic in your application so that it conforms to accepted practice on
its platform. Qt uses Apple's accessibility framework to provide access
to users with diabilities.
\section1 Development Tools
Mac OS X developers expect a certain level of interopability
between their development toolkit and the platform's developer
tools (for example Visual Studio, gmake, etc). Qt supports both Unix
style Makefiles, and ProjectBuilder/Xcode project files by using
the \l qmake tool. For example:
\snippet doc/src/snippets/code/doc_src_qtmac-as-native.qdoc 0
will generate an Xcode project file from project.pro. With \l qmake
you do not have to worry about rules for Qt's preprocessors (\l moc
and \l uic) since \l qmake automatically handles them and ensures that
everything necessary is linked into your application.
Qt does not entirely interact with the development environment (for
example plugins to set a file to "mocable" from within the Xcode
user interface). Nokia is actively working on improving Qt's
interoperability with various IDEs.
*/
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