Inside Macintosh: QuickDraw GX Environment and Utilities /

Preface - About This Book

What to Read

Each chapter in this book describes a separate topic that does not rely on any other chapter for its understanding. As a result, the chapters of this book may be read in any order.

• QuickDraw GX and the Macintosh Environment. This chapter describes those aspects of QuickDraw GX that relate specifically to the Macintosh Toolbox, Macintosh programming environment, and Macintosh image data format.
• QuickDraw GX Memory Management. This chapter describes the aspects of QuickDraw GX memory management that your application can control. Read this chapter if you want to understand how QuickDraw GX memory works or to supplement QuickDraw GX memory management operations.
• Errors, Warnings, and Notices. This chapter describes the errors, warnings, and notices that can be posted by QuickDraw GX functions and how you can manipulate them. In addition, this chapter describes how you can use application-defined handllers to provide alternative or complementary processing of errors, warnings, and notices.
• QuickDraw GX Debugging. This chapter describes QuickDraw GX debugging functions and the GraphicsBug debugging utility that you should use when you are writing and debugging applications.
• Collection Manager. This chapter describes the Collection Manager, which provides an abstract data type you can use to store collections of information. Read this chapter if you need to work with some advanced features of QuickDraw GX printing, including print dialog boxes, or if you want to create collections for purposes specific to your application.
• Message Manager. This chapter describes the Message Manager, which is a part of the message-passing printing architecture of QuickDraw GX. Read this chapter if you want to use the Message Manager to develop printing extensions or printer drivers.
• QuickDraw GX Stream Format. This chapter describes the format of the compressed data stream that results when the QuickDraw GX GXFlattenShape function is used. It also describes the use of such data streams by print files and portable digital documents (PDDs). Read this chapter if you need to uncompress QuickDraw GX stream format data and cannot use the QuickDraw GX GXUnflattenShape function.
• QuickDraw GX Mathematics. This chapter describes QuickDraw GX number formats, number-format conversions, mathematical functions, and functions that operation on mappings (transformation matrices). Read this chapter if your application requires the explicit use of any of the mathematical capabilities of QuickDraw GX.