FreeTDS Development Group

[James Gregurich <jgregurich AT antaresnet.com>]

>Mac OSX should be working, as far as I know 
>(it shares more with unix than with Mac 8/9) unless you mean a Carbon port

It is a hybrid of FreeBSD and NetBSD on a Mach kernal. most non-GUI freeBSD
software can be compiled with little or no modification. GUI is coming.
There are working versions of xFree86 on MacOS X as well as a commercial
Xserver from Tenon. Apple's GUI layer is proprietary and based on the
NeXTStep/OpenStep system. The main API for this system is called Cocoa.
Cocoa contains AppKit, FoundationKit, etc. The GUI layer is generally
refered to as Aqua. The current version of xFree86 can run in parallel with
Aqua, but requires the user to toggle between the two environments. The
tenon system runs X Applications inside of Aqua.


>are they still calling it the Carbon API?

yes. Carbon API is an API similar enough to the traditional Mac API
(toolbox) to allow Mac developers to quickly port their applications to
MacOS X without massive re-writes. Executables based on the Carbon libraries
run on both MacOS and MacOS X. There is not even a re-compile required.
Carbon is basically the Mac toolbox rewritten to be threadsafe in a
pre-emptive multitasking environment. API calls that could not be made
threadsafe were thrown out or replaced. Lots of legacy API calls were thrown
out.

The Carbon Layer exists in parallel with the Cocoa layer. As I understand
it, Carbon can do almost everything Cocoa can do.


James