Re: Shell tool with GUI
Re: Shell tool with GUI
- Subject: Re: Shell tool with GUI
- From: "Michael Ash" <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2008 12:06:27 -0500
On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 12:57 AM, Chris Hiszpanski <email@hidden> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm trying to write a very simple oscilloscope in Cocoa as a shell tool that
> continuously reads samples via standard input and draws them as a waveform
> in a window. I do _not_ want a menu bar (i.e. an application), just one
> window that disappears when the parent shell tool receives the interrupt
> signal.
>
> - How can I create a window without creating a full fledge application (i.e.
> without creating an instance of NSApplication)?
Can't be done. NSApplication is a prerequisite to creating windows
with Cocoa. NSApplication is not incompatible with a shell tool as
others have mentioned so you can simply do this *with* an instance of
NSApplication, however I would like to point out a couple of
alternative strategies that you may not have considered.
1) Build a real application, with a .app and everything. Build it so
that it can be invoked from the command line, by typing out the full
path to the bundled executable. Look at PackageMaker for an example of
this. (With the dev tools installed in the standard location, type
/Developer/Applications/Utilities/PackageMaker.app/Contents/MacOS/PackageMaker
--help) A GUI application can still be launched from the shell, read
command-line parameters, and interact with stdio. If the long path is
inconvenient, make a symbolic link to it somewhere.
2) Build a real application that doesn't get invoked from the shell,
but does normal application-like things. Build a companion shell tool
which you can invoke from the command line. Have it read whatever
command line options you have and grab the data from stdin, then pass
those on to the GUI application by using some IPC mechanism, such as
distributed objects, mach ports, or whatever. This gives you a nice
clean separation between the CLI and GUI pieces of your puzzle.
Mike
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