Cocoa Interface: what changed

Revision 2 to 3. Removed lines have a minus sign; added lines have a plus sign.

Old	New		Line
1	1		(macOS only)
2	2
3	3		## Cocoa bindings
4	4
5	5		The 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.
6	6
7	7		## Compiling
8	8
9	9		For 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/).
10	10
11	11		### FPC 3.2.0 for macOS 10.10 and earlier
12	12
13	13		The 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.
14	14
15	15		In order to fix that one might want to update headers and recompile them from the sources.
16	16
17	17		1\. Get the FPC sources (you might have them already installed with Lazarus, as it's a prerequisite for the IDE).
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19	19		2\. Go to %sourcesdir%/packages/cocoaint/src
20	20
21	21		3\. Edit CocoaAll.pas and comment out or remove The CoreImage linking line:
22	22
23	23		``` pascal
24	24		unit CocoaAll;
25	25		interface
26	26
27	27		{$linkframework Cocoa}
28	28		{$linkframework Foundation}
29	29		//{$linkframework CoreImage} comment out this line
30	30		{$linkframework QuartzCore}
31	31		{$linkframework CoreData}
32	32		{$linkframework AppKit}
33	33		```
34	34
35	35		4\. Headers now needs to be recompiled.
36	36
37	37		5\. Go back to the root directory of the sources.
38	38
39	39		6\. Compile the RTL packages.
40	40
41		-	~~```~~
	41	+	```text
42	42		make rtl
43	43		```
44	44
45	45		This should compile a 64-bit version of the RTL. The RTL is needed to compile packages in the next step.
46	46
47	47		7\. Compile the packages:
48	48
49		-	~~```~~
	49	+	```text
50	50		make packages
51	51		```
52	52
53	53		This should compile A 64-bit version of the FPC packages.
54	54
55	55		8\. Go to %sourcesdir%/packages/cocoaint
56	56
57	57		9\. 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:
58	58
59		-	~~```~~
	59	+	```text
60	60		sudo make install
61	61		```
62	62
63	63		### Prepare your Lazarus project for using Cocoa
64	64
65	65		You may need to set the Target to the 64bit processor and select the Cocoa Widget set:
66	66
67	67		- Open your project with Lazarus and click Project/Project Options
68	68		- In the "Config and Target" panel set the "Target CPU family" to be "x86_64"
69	69		- In the "Additions and Overrides" panel click on "Set LCLWidgetType" pulldown and set the value to "Cocoa"
70	70		- 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.
71	71		- Now compile your project - with any luck it will work OK.
72	72
73	73		### Error ATSUFindFontFromName
74	74
75	75		If you're getting the error:
76	76
77		-	~~```~~
	77	+	```text
78	78		carbonproc.pp(563,13) Error: Identifier not found "ATSUFindFontFromName"
79	79		```
80	80
81	81		when compiling a project for macOS using FPC, you either:
82	82
83	83		- 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.)
84	84
85	85		:*by setting the target in Project options (switching it from default to i386)
86	86
87	87		:by setting the CPU_TARGET=i386* parameter for the make command if compiling from the command line.
88	88
89	89		- or set the LCL target (widgetset) to "Cocoa".
90	90
91	91		### Cocoa Debugging
92	92
93	93		See the [[Cocoa Debugging]] article.
94	94
95	95		## Cocoa FAQ
96	96
97	97		### DPI and scaling issues
98	98
99	99		See the [[Cocoa DPI]] article.
100	100
101	101		### TButton looks too small!
102	102
103	103		If 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).
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105	105		If 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:
106	106
107	107		- AutoSize=True
108	108		- Constrains.MinWidth = Constrains.MaxWidth = your desired width.
109	109
110	110		### Overlapping Widgets
111	111
112	112		Lazarus 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).
113	113
114	114		## Roadmap
115	115
116	116		[[Roadmap\|Roadmap: Status of Features in each Widget set]]
117	117
118	118		## See also
119	119
120	120		- [[Cocoa Internals]]
121	121
122	122		## External links
123	123
124	124		- [Apple: Cocoa Event Handling](https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/EventOverview/Introduction/Introduction.html)
125	125		- [Apple: Button Programming Topics](https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/Button/Button.html)
126	126		- [Apple: Cocoa Bindings Programming Topics](https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/CocoaBindings/CocoaBindings.html)
127	127		- [Apple: Cocoa Text Architecture Guide](https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/TextFonts/Conceptual/CocoaTextArchitecture/Introduction/Introduction.html)
128	128
129	129		---
130	130		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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