source: trunk/doc/src/platforms/qtmac-as-native.qdoc@ 846

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/*!
    \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.
*/