One design pattern that is essential to cocoa, but really to all good apps is Model-View-Controller, right? I think the confusion here is in the differences of these three aspects.
Model is the back end and the least impacted of the three. Barring something like Core Data, a good crossplatform's app can have this identical across systems.
View is the opposite, the most obvious of the three, but the most fixable. Slap in a nib file, apply that aqua-y filter on the images, etc. Pretty pretty screen shots.
The slippery slope is Controller. To a degree this can be cross platform, but too much and it becomes obvious. This is the true measure of how well behaved a mac program is. I haven't used Neooffice, so I don't know how maclike it truely is. Perhaps this is the litmus test:
1987: Command F, cut copy paste. All vintage System 6. Meeting just this means you're 20 years behind the time.
1997: Drag and drop. Mac truetype fonts. PDF support. Help menu. Welcome to MacOS 8. 10 years behind the time.
2007: Contextual menus doing fancy things like spell-checking. Services. Sheets. Dock icon alerts and badges. Spotlight support. These are the earmarks of a modern mac app.
Obviously, not all of them are necessary, but a few are sufficient. What makes some of us chafe at firefox isn't its rendering and network engine; to the contrary, that's its saving grace on the mac, a good model.
What makes some of us chafe at firefox isn't the windows or scroll bars. They use standard graphics, the view.
When I reread the complaints, it's all about what's between. The controller code. And that is all the difference.
by Blain — Mar 26
Model is the back end and the least impacted of the three. Barring something like Core Data, a good crossplatform's app can have this identical across systems.
View is the opposite, the most obvious of the three, but the most fixable. Slap in a nib file, apply that aqua-y filter on the images, etc. Pretty pretty screen shots.
The slippery slope is Controller. To a degree this can be cross platform, but too much and it becomes obvious. This is the true measure of how well behaved a mac program is. I haven't used Neooffice, so I don't know how maclike it truely is. Perhaps this is the litmus test:
1987: Command F, cut copy paste. All vintage System 6. Meeting just this means you're 20 years behind the time.
1997: Drag and drop. Mac truetype fonts. PDF support. Help menu. Welcome to MacOS 8. 10 years behind the time.
2007: Contextual menus doing fancy things like spell-checking. Services. Sheets. Dock icon alerts and badges. Spotlight support. These are the earmarks of a modern mac app.
Obviously, not all of them are necessary, but a few are sufficient. What makes some of us chafe at firefox isn't its rendering and network engine; to the contrary, that's its saving grace on the mac, a good model.
What makes some of us chafe at firefox isn't the windows or scroll bars. They use standard graphics, the view.
When I reread the complaints, it's all about what's between. The controller code. And that is all the difference.