Programming with Quartz: 2D and PDF Graphics in Mac OS X (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics) (Paperback)

by David Gelphman (Author), Bunny Laden (Author) "The Apple Max OS X operating system contains a powerful 2D graphics imaging library called Quartz..." (more)
Key Phrases: bitmap context, indexed color space, graphics state parameters, Quartz Compositor, Reference Library, Quartz Debug (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"I strongly encourage non-Macintosh programmers to pick up this book and find out for themselves what a truly great development platform we have in the Macintosh. Programmers and software managers at Windows, Linux, and Unix shops should seriously consider the Macintosh as an addition to (or replacement for!) their current stable of platforms. In particular, movie studios, animation houses, and special-effects facilities would do well to consider that with Macintosh, a single platform can provide everything they need..."-from the foreword by Philip J. Schneider, R&D Engineer, Industrial Light + Magic

"Finally, the book I've wanted for years is here! As a graphics programmer, I appreciate the clear explanations of how Quartz has packaged the state of the art for mere mortals. As a Cocoa programmer, I appreciate the clear explanation of which facilities of Quartz Cocoa is already leveraging. This will become a well-thumbed resource for all graphics programmers on Mac OS X, whether or not they're using Cocoa, Carbon, or porting code from another platform."-Dr. Michael B. Johnson, Pixar Animation Studios

"I've been using Quartz since the first release of Mac OS X and this book covers it all! Great advice, good sample code-it's the book to have if you want to learn everything about Quartz."-Stephane Marcouiller, SDE, Microsoft Corporation

"Not only do the authors of Programming with Quartz have a superb understanding of their subject matter, but they have conveyed their knowledge in a clear, concise, and readable manner. Programming with Quartz has saved me quite a bit of time on my first major Quartz project, and its more general lessons on graphics programming techniques and concepts will prove valuable when using any modern graphics API."-Josh Aas, Software Engineer, Mozilla Corporation

"Even after implementing several features using Quartz, I still learned things from this book that I did not know. For example, the chapter on handling PDF images is very thorough in its descriptions and the issues it raises. I wish I had this chapter when I implemented this feature. The book is very well written and covers many complex topics in 2D graphics clearly and at a level appropriate for all programmers. Programming with Quartz continues Apple's tradition of producing excellent documentation for its developers."-Ron Ullmann, Macintosh Business Unit, Microsoft Corporation

Book Description
The first guide to the new graphics system of Mac OS X Tiger from the development team at Apple

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Product Details

• Paperback: 704 pages
• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; 1 edition (December 28, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0123694736
• ISBN-13: 978-0123694737
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #127,916 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing, in-depth guide to Quartz 2D, January 21, 2006

By	David Hill (College Station, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you develop for Mac OS X and you do any 2D graphics programming in Quartz 2D or the Cocoa graphics APIs, you need this book. The table of contents isn't available here at the moment but (trust me on this) this book covers it ALL as far as Quartz 2D is concerned. The authors cover everything: basic Quartz 2D drawing (from Carbon, Cocoa, and Python!), the Quartz drawing model (coordinate systems, transforms, paths, color spaces, etc.), drawing images and text, plus drawing and inspecting PDF content. I'll hit a few highlights in my comments below.

Throughout the book, they've made it a point to cover which APIs are available in which versions of Mac OS X, a godsend if you're delivering apps that must support multiple OS versions but you'd still like to take advantage of the latest features when possible. Where the OS allows, they even explain how to emulate some of the new convenience APIs on older OSes.

Each chapter ends with an extensive list of references (sample code, headers, specifications, and more from Apple, Adobe, and others) to help you find further information, in case you need more detail on a particular topic.

For text drawing, an area in which Quartz 2D provides only a low-level API, the authors explain how to properly use the facilities available in the higher-level frameworks (Carbon and Cocoa).

For those of you coming from QuickDraw, there's a short section specifically targetted at replacing CopyBits (in addition to the chapters on image drawing and offscreen caching).

Near the end of the book, there's an invaluable chapter on how to optimize and debug your drawing code.

Finally, for those developers preparing universal binaries of your applications (all of you, I hope), the authors identify several issues (bitmap data format endian issues, etc.) that you'll need to watch out for and explain what to do about them.

A quick additional note: the publisher has the full Table of Contents as well as a sample chapter available for download at books.elsevier.com/us/mk/us/subindex.asp?isbn=0123694736

Disclaimer: I spent 4 years in Apple's Developer Technical Support group supporting Quartz 2D and other topics. This book would have made my job *much* easier, perhaps even unnecessary.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Almost as good as Inside Mac, February 13, 2006

By	David Polaschek "mac guy" (Minneapolis, MN USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

When I was learning to program the Macintosh in 1990, I turned to the Inside Macintosh series. At the time, you could pick up volumes I-III, read them cover to cover, and know everything you needed to get started programming the Macintosh. Today that's no longer possible for a number of reasons. Apple has discontinued the series, and just provides API references online. Plus any such multi-volume set covering everything you needed to know today would take up most of a bookshelf, rather than a few volumes. I think that's a shame since my favorite part of the books was always the discussion section -- the part that told you WHY you wanted to call various functions in a certain order.

Programming with Quartz is the discussion portions that would be in an Inside Macintosh: Quartz. It gives you the valuable concepts behind the APIs that help you write new and useful code right away, rather than spending time tweaking sample-code until you've learned your way around the APIs. It shortens the learning-curve.

My only complaint is that I wish this book had been around back in the Mac OS X 10.1 days. Even if you've already figured out Quartz this book is useful, but it would have helped significantly with the confusion many of us faced six years ago.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book for beginning Quartz programmers, April 19, 2006

By	calvinnme "Texan refugee" (Fredericksburg, Va) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

Quartz 2D is the primary graphics library in Mac OS X and is based on version 1.4 of Adobe PDF. It supercedes QuickDraw, which was used in earlier versions of the Mac OS. In Quartz 2D the coordinate space is an abstract concept defined by real values in 2 dimensions. Points in this space can be connected to form paths, such as straight lines, Bezier curves and so on. To create actual graphics on the display, the paths are rasterized as needed to generate the pixels at the display device's resolution. This permits the same graphics commands to yield the same output on any device using the best resolution available.
This book is full of clear explanations for mere mortals of how Quartz has packaged the state of the art in graphics programming. The book starts out with Quartz 2D drawing basics such as drawing and filling basic geometric forms and drawing lines. With the basics out of the way, the author goes on to show how you would use Quartz 2D both in Cocoa and in Carbon. Next there are chapters on basic computer graphics intertwined with performing these tasks in Quartz. Included topics are coordinate systems, affine transformations, and parametric curves all within the framework of performing graphics in Quartz. The book then moves on to working with images including creating CGImage objects, and importing and exporting data to PNG, JPEG, and Quicktime formats. Another chapter is devoted to working with text. There are two chapters devoted to working with PDF data, including a chapter on handling PDF images that is very thorough in its descriptions and the issues that are raised. The book is very well written and covers many complex topics in 2D graphics clearly and at a level appropriate for all programmers, and I highly recommend it for all programmers interested in Quartz.