Saving Data

I just added functionality to the Cocoa Bindings MailDemo app so that it saves the data I enter to the disk.  It's really cool to see it work now because everything that I enter into it is saved.  When I open the application again all of the same data is there.  It's amazing how easy it is to do this and it's cool to see it working.  Now I just have to apply all of this to my application.

Cocoa Bindings

I've just finished a short tutorial on Cocoa Bindings.  Bindings seem to go right along with Core Data and the Core Data tutorial recommended I work on both together.  I got to the point in the Core Data tutorial of making a Blog application where I needed to use Bindings so I started reading the Bindings tutorial first.  I got through that so now I have a very basic understanding of what I'm going to do with it for the Blog application.  Bindings kind of replaces all of the actions and methods in Interface Builder that connect the objects and eliminates the need for writing those actions out.  It just directly "binds" objects to certain arrays or objects.  It makes sense how this works closely with Core Data as I'm guessing I'll end up binding display objects to the Core Data entities.

Core Data

I'm working through a tutorial on cocoadevcentral about Core Data.  The concepts of it are actually the hardest part.  I don't fully understand what is going on.  However, it is simple to develop with it, as is often true with these Apple technologies.  It is similar to working with Interface Builder in that it is all graphical and no actual code has to be written to use Core Data.  This makes it easy to follow along and know what I'm doing.  Unfortunately, it really is so complex that I'm doing much more with Core Data than I should be able to with my limited knowledge.  So there are a lot of things that I don't quite understand but hopefully they will become clearer as I work with it more.

Journal

Okay so the best idea I came up with so far was a really basic sort of journal application.  It's very basic but I just want to be able to make entries and have them stored on the computer.  Also, if possible, I would like it to be able to connect to this blog so I could write something in my program and have it posted here.  That may not be realistic though.  To do this I've started looking into how to store data on the computer through Core Data.  This is, again, a whole new topic that will take some practice.  The basics of the interface will be familiar to me atleast and shouldn't be too difficult to make.  The challenge will be dealing with and storing data.

Ideas

I've been going through different objects and trying to use them in my application.  So far I've fiddled with things like an embedded movie, images, tabs, etc...I'm currently working on trying to figure out how to achieve something I used to be able to do with PHP.  There is a Level Indicator object that gives a graphic representation of the progress of something in the application.  I want that to be able to update when certain things change, without me directly telling it to change through a method.  To do this, the object has to be 'listening' for certain events that tell it to advance its indicator.

I'm also just trying to brainstorm some ideas for what I should actually make.  I'm getting better at doing very basic things and I think it would help the most if I had a specific idea of what I wanted to make so I could know where to go and what I needed to learn.  Then I would be able to learn how to do each of the things I need to make a full application that does whatever I want.  It won't be something all that amazing, but I want it to do something atleast, even if it has already been done by somebody else.

Interface Builder

Well it doesn't really work to create a new Text object because I guess that pretty much has to be done in the Interface Builder.  Due to that, I've started going through more of the Interface Builder library of objects to see what I can add to my application.  I basically just put together a bunch of random interface objects in a window and am now trying to make them interact with each other.  For instance I want a button to make another window appear and another to change some text, etc...It's a challenge to work with creating and closing new windows, as they are similar to the NSTextView objects in that I have to get the window object to display and disappear.

Progress

I've just been seeing what I can do on my own now.  Obviously there isn't a lot, but I've managed to change colors of objects and change text in text fields.  I can also set attributes of objects such as fonts and colors and whether the text within is editable.  Of course those methods only apply to certain objects.  What I am trying to do now, with difficulty, is simply be able to create a new NSTextField object and display it.  Previously I have always created the basic objects in the Interface Builder, which is very easy.  Now, I want to actually initialize and make the object with code and specify its location and size, etc.  This is much harder than it sounds however and I have yet to figure it out.  I can initialize the object, but am having trouble actually displaying it.  To figure this stuff out, I'm basically just going through the documentation, which Apple provides, on all of the different classes such as NSTextField and seeing what methods there are that I can use.  This takes time because to get the method I want I have to look at NSTextField, and then all of the classes it inherits from as well to find the right methods. (NSControl, NSView, NSResponder, NSObject, etc.)  I am learning the basics, however, and can now atleast do basics on my own.