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by Klonoar 2443 days ago
HIView and HIWindow were added, if I recall correctly, because it allowed other toolkits (tk, Qt (who only recently moved off this), etc) to draw the native look “properly”. It was never actually up to date or well documented, and they kept it around just so the OS didn’t look so totally bizarre as you moved through it (like you see on Windows).

Bolting on Retina support to that is such a no-brainer that I hesitate to call it adding features - that was table stakes in making sure the switch to retina didn’t look like total ass.

None of this stuff ever changed how Carbon was deprecated. People just sat around not listening to Apple, and then the last two years the bigger GUI toolkits finally did the work to transition properly.
1 comments
swerner 2443 days ago
HIView was up to date and documented, and there were WWDC sessions teaching developers why they should move to HIView and how to do it. Likewise, Apple provided documentation about how to port your Carbon application to 64 bit Carbon. Maxon reportedly even had a 64bit Carbon version of Cinema 4D ready to ship when Apple suddenly announced that they would abandon 64bit Carbon - telling developers to disregard the 64bit Carbon they were still shipping in betas.
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Klonoar 2437 days ago
Yeah, no, this really wasn't the case.

Toolkits that used HIView/HIWindow looked very out of date compared to proper Cocoa implementations (Qt, contrary to popular belief, wasn't really "native" for the longest time since they did this - it's part of why it always looked off).

There are very valid reasons to be frustrated with Apple, but the writing has been on the wall for this stuff for years now. Nobody should be complaining at this point.

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mrpippy 2442 days ago
Exactly. In the days of WWDC 2003/2004 there were numerous separate Cocoa/Carbon sessions, and the Carbon message was to go fully to HIToolbox and Carbon Events.

Carbon NIBs even existed, although the format (XML) and concept (definitely not “freeze-dried objects”) were totally different from anything Cocoa. Xcode 4 and up couldn’t edit or view Carbon NIBs, which made that tech deprecation pretty clear.

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