Dr. Dobb's Journal - August 2008 - (Page 23)

Not so on the iPhone. One of my personal rendering “magic tricks” involves swapping between mipmapped and nonmipmapped texture modes using the same texture object. When I tried this on my iPod Touch, it ran so slow at first that I thought I was getting a software fallback (which, it turns out, does not exist). To get best results in a complex rendering (especially if you are making a game), you should architect your rendering code to sort geometry based on rendering state, and not worry about frontto-back sorting as is typical on desktop systems. Cocoa and Objective C Probably the biggest perceived hurdles for entry into Mac OS X programming is Objective C (“C with objects”) and Cocoa (Apple’s object-oriented application framework). On the iPhone, Cocoa is extended to “Cocoa Touch” which is , designed around the touch interface for user interaction. I use Objective C when necessary, but I like to share a lot of code between the Mac and Windows versions of my software. So an early trick I learned was how to bridge Objective C to C++ and vice versa. If you’re new to the Mac development environment, the most important thing I can tell you is that you do not have to use Objective C for everything. Not only can you use C and C++ for desktop and iPhone development, but you can code C and even C++ classes right in an Objective C source module (for C++, you must rename the files from *.m to *.mm). Even better, it is easy to link Objective C-based Cocoa code with C or C++ code modules. It is also a common misunderstanding that all OS X APIs are exposed via Cocoa. Many APIs, such as OpenGL, are indeed C APIs that can be called from just about any programming language that supports the C calling convention. XCode 3.1 comes with a new template for Cocoa Touch OpenGL applications for the iPhone Get moving. Stay focused. Take control. Enterprise Architect from Sparx Systems redefines visual modeling with a huge set of built-in tools, technologies and capabilities, coupled with a lightweight footprint and great agility. With deep support for UML 2.1 and its related standards, Enterprise Architect 7.1 is the ideal tool to analyze, design, build and manage your next software project. Keep your project moving, keep your team focused and stay in total control. Visit sparxsystems.com for a free trial August 2008 l www.ddj.com l Dr. Dobb’s Journal 23 http://sparxsystems.com http://sparxsystems.com http://www.ddj.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Dr. Dobb's Journal - August 2008

Dr. Dobb's Journal - August 2008 Contents Friday Night Fish Fry Alia Vox Developer Diaries Developer’s Notebook A Conversation with Christos Papadimitriou OpenGL and Mobile Devices: Round 2 Ellipse Specification Using Vectors Embed Custom GUIs in WPF Building RIAs on J2EE Foundations Disentangling Concepts in Object-Oriented Systems The Agile Edge Effective Concurrency Swaine’s Flames

Dr. Dobb's Journal - August 2008

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