Inside Macintosh: Text /

Chapter 1 - Introduction to Text on the Macintosh

Macintosh Text Overview

Text handling on the Macintosh is fundamentally different from the way it is approached on some common text-based computer systems. There is no hardware-based character generator to put text on the screen; there is no standard input/output window (and no Writeline command) for easy generation of text messages.

To draw any text, you first must create a window to draw in. In that window, you can then draw shapes, including the shapes of letters. See the Window Manager chapter in Inside Macintosh: Macintosh Toolbox Essentials for a discussion of how to create a window.

In accepting text input and storing text in memory, you cannot assume any particular hardware (keyboard) configuration, you should not assume a particular language
for input, you should not assume that characters are always represented by ASCII
codes, and you should not even assume that a single character is always represented
by 1 byte of storage.

This section paints a broad picture of how text processing works on the Macintosh, and presents some fundamental terminology. It also introduces script systems and briefly discusses two components of system software of special interest for text processing.
The section concludes with suggestions on how to give your application the level of text-handling sophistication it requires.

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Subtopics

Separation of Tasks

Text Is Graphics

Characters, Glyphs, Character Codes, and Bytes

Text Storage

Keyboards and Input Methods

Writing Systems and Script Systems

Macintosh Text Utilities

TextEdit, a Text-Processing Service

Planning Your Text Handling Capabilities