[Chicken-users] Chicken->Objective-C

[Ed Watkeys]

Hi,

As I was tediously writing wrappers for the CGxxx CoreGraphics 
functions, it hit me that there is an easier way to get access to 
Quartz 2D: through the Objective-C NSGraphicsContext class. Why, I 
asked myself, am I concentrating on churning out wrappers for a ton of 
individual functions when I could "simply" write an Objective-C bridge 
that would let me send messages to any object?

I started writing such a bridge, and here's some (hilariously simple) 
sample code:

(define pool (make_autorelease_pool))

; Let's get the description of the pool i.e. do this:
;
;   NSString *s = [pool description];
;   char *utf8 = [s UTF8String];

(define s (msg pool description))
(define utf8 (as_cstring (msg s UTF8String)))
(display utf8)
(newline)

(release pool)

Notice that I'm sending messages that take no arguments. That's because 
I haven't figured out how I want to send them to the glue. (Thus my 
message about new FFI techniques.) As soon as I figure out how to deal 
with the argument passing issue (feel free to make suggestions), I'll 
put the code somewhere interested parties can grab it.

Regards,
Ed

--
Watkeys Product Design -- http://watkeys.com/