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Cocoa Interface: what changed

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11*(macOS only)*
22
33## Cocoa bindings
44
55The Cocoa interface uses the native support in Free Pascal for direct communication with Objective-C which was added through the [[FPC PasCocoa|Objective Pascal]] dialect.
66
77## Compiling
88
99For macOS 10.14 Mojave and later you should be installing FPC 3.2.0 available from the official [Lazarus IDE file area](https://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus/files/).
1010
1111### FPC 3.2.0 for macOS 10.10 and earlier
1212
1313The precompiled CocoaAll header comes with an instruction to link the CoreImage framework. The framework was introduced in macOS 10.11 and later. (The CoreImage APIs were available since 10.4, BUT there was a stand-alone CoreImage framework. They were all part of QuartzCore framework). Compiling any unit using CocoaAll will likely cause the linking stage to fail on macOS 10.10 and earlier, as the framework doesn't exist.
1414
1515In order to fix that one might want to update headers and recompile them from the sources.
1616
17171\. Get the FPC sources (you might have them already installed with Lazarus, as it's a prerequisite for the IDE).
1818
19192\. Go to %sourcesdir%/packages/cocoaint/src
2020
21213\. Edit CocoaAll.pas and comment out or remove The CoreImage linking line:
2222
2323``` pascal
2424 unit CocoaAll;
2525 interface
2626
2727 {$linkframework Cocoa}
2828 {$linkframework Foundation}
2929 //{$linkframework CoreImage} comment out this line
3030 {$linkframework QuartzCore}
3131 {$linkframework CoreData}
3232 {$linkframework AppKit}
3333```
3434
35354\. Headers now needs to be recompiled.
3636
37375\. Go back to the root directory of the sources.
3838
39396\. Compile the RTL packages.
4040
41-`make rtl`
41+```
42+make rtl
43+```
4244
4345This should compile a 64-bit version of the RTL. The RTL is needed to compile packages in the next step.
4446
45477\. Compile the packages:
4648
47-`make packages`
49+```
50+make packages
51+```
4852
4953This should compile A 64-bit version of the FPC packages.
5054
51558\. Go to %sourcesdir%/packages/cocoaint
5256
53579\. Run the command to install the package (to the default system location). Do not forget to add OPT=" if you're on 10.7 or earlier:
5458
55-`sudo make install`
59+```
60+sudo make install
61+```
5662
5763### Prepare your Lazarus project for using Cocoa
5864
5965You may need to set the Target to the 64bit processor and select the Cocoa Widget set:
6066
6167- Open your project with Lazarus and click Project/Project Options
6268- In the "Config and Target" panel set the "Target CPU family" to be "x86_64"
6369- In the "Additions and Overrides" panel click on "Set LCLWidgetType" pulldown and set the value to "Cocoa"
6470- In the past, for some reason Lazarus kept setting the compiler to "/usr/local/bin/ppc386" - which results in 32 bit apps. Make sure under Tools-\>Options that "Compiler Executable" is set to "/usr/local/bin/fpc" to get 64 bit apps.
6571- Now compile your project - with any luck it will work OK.
6672
6773### Error ATSUFindFontFromName
6874
6975If you're getting the error:
7076
71-`carbonproc.pp(563,13) Error: Identifier not found "ATSUFindFontFromName"`
77+```
78+carbonproc.pp(563,13) Error: Identifier not found "ATSUFindFontFromName"
79+```
7280
7381when compiling a project for macOS using FPC, you either:
7482
7583- set the CPU target explicitly to i386. (FPC 3.2.0 compiles to x86_64 for the Darwin target by default. This is done due Apple having dropped support for 32-bit target in macOS 10.15 Catalina released in October 2019.)
7684
7785:*by setting the target in Project options (switching it from default to i386)
7886
7987:*by setting the *CPU_TARGET=i386* parameter for the make command if compiling from the command line.
8088
8189- or set the LCL target (widgetset) to "Cocoa".
8290
8391### Cocoa Debugging
8492
8593See the [[Cocoa Debugging]] article.
8694
8795## Cocoa FAQ
8896
8997### DPI and scaling issues
9098
9199See the [[Cocoa DPI]] article.
92100
93101### TButton looks too small!
94102
95103If you design a button in another widgetset with Autosize=False it might happen that the button looks too small in Cocoa, and a number of people have complained about this, such as in [this bug report](https://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=31185).
96104
97105If you don't care about the button size, just set AutoSize=True. If you want to have a custom width for the button, but want to allow the LCL to choose the right Height so that the button will look good in Cocoa, then the solution in this case is to set the following properties in the Object Inspector:
98106
99107- AutoSize=True
100108- Constrains.MinWidth = Constrains.MaxWidth = your desired width.
101109
102110### Overlapping Widgets
103111
104112Lazarus allows you to set the depth of different widgets, such that when two widgets overlap, the "closer" object blocks the view of the more "distant" object. You can do this at design time (right-click on object and click "Z-order") or at run time with functions like "BringToFront" and "SendToBack". Be aware that this may not always work with Cocoa. This is a 'feature' of Cocoa, as clipping is optimized for performance. Therefore, if you plan to compile your projects for Cocoa it is a good strategy to avoid overlapping widgets or to place them on different panels to provide explicit control of Z-order. For more details [see this bug report](https://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=32991).
105113
106114## Roadmap
107115
108116[[Roadmap|Roadmap: Status of Features in each Widget set]]
109117
110118## See also
111119
112120- [[Cocoa Internals]]
113121
114122## External links
115123
116124- [Apple: Cocoa Event Handling](https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/EventOverview/Introduction/Introduction.html)
117125- [Apple: Button Programming Topics](https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/Button/Button.html)
118126- [Apple: Cocoa Bindings Programming Topics](https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/CocoaBindings/CocoaBindings.html)
119127- [Apple: Cocoa Text Architecture Guide](https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/TextFonts/Conceptual/CocoaTextArchitecture/Introduction/Introduction.html)
120128
121129---
122130*From the Free Pascal wiki, page "Cocoa Interface", as it stood on 2021-02-24 after a change by Trev, out of the wiki's dump of 2024-05-26. Copyright stays with the author who wrote it, according to the old wiki's [[Licensing]] page. If you have concerns about this material, [message the admin](/wiki-contact).*

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