macOS Help on conversion of rsrc resources

[lordnemesis]

Need some Help form you ppl....

We have some .rsrc resource files in our mac application and it contains a lot of things like Dialogs, Menus, String Tables and Pictures and some other things. We are porting this to XCODE. We can directly use the rsrc in XCODE also, but I am interested in converting these resources to NIB files. It seems Nibs are intended only for UI Resources like Dialogs Menus and PICTs. So what should we do with the strings and other custom resources that we have in the rsrc. We want to completely eliminate the rsrc resources from the application.

Thanks in Advance...

 

[szymczyk]

I know you want to eliminate the resource files, but the easiest way to go is to convert the UI resources to nib files and keep the other resources in the resource files. There's no reason why you can't use resource files and nib files. After you get your program running on Xcode, you can go back and eliminate the resource files.

If you're still set on eliminating the resource files, you have some hard work ahead of you. Interface Builder can convert resource files into nib files, but there are no tools to easily convert non-UI resources. You'll have to save the data for the custom resources in the data fork of a file and use the File Manager to read the data from the file. The string table resources are going to be more difficult to convert because you can't call GetIndString() to retrieve a string from the table.

 

[Sayer]

Have you considered hiring an independent developer to *just* migrate the app over to Xcode for you?

If it's just resources, you wouldn't risk exposing your code to the outside. Alternately you can get a boilelrplate NDA and have the developer sign off on it to work in the changes to your app's actual code.

There are several routines in Carbon/Cocoa to load pre-made strings from string files in the app bundle. The same for graphics, which can be broken out into individual files in just about any format (usually TIFF or PNG in OS X) and loaded with new APIs in Carbon/Cocoa.

There are tons of experienced independent Mac software developers out in thet wild that would love to have a one-time contract to do some work on a commercial-level app.