CocoaTech Frameworks
The Cocoa frameworks used to create Path Finder, and source code used to write Path Finder plugins are now open source and ready for immediate download.
Included in the source code package are two powerful frameworks: CocoaTechBase and CocoaTechFoundation. These two frameworks make up the heart and soul of Path Finder.
Also included are 4 real world Path Finder plugins. These aren’t simplified versions, these are the actual full plugins that ship with Path Finder. “Hex View”, “Image Converter”, “Get Info”, and a sample plugin designed to be a perfect starting point to write your own Path Finder plugin.
The license is BSD-style. With loads of categories in the same namespace and dependencies on the Omni frameworks, I doubt many developers will want to use these frameworks as-is, but there’s probably a lot to learn from them. Path Finder is a multi-threaded app, and it handles both Unix and Mac aspects of files.
Sometimes it’s easy to what’s going on, as in NTWeblocFile.m where Gehrman explains his reverse engineering of the Finder’s “webloc” files. In other cases, the code is clear but the rationale is not, as in NSNumber-NTExtensions.m where there is a category for wrapping NSSizes when NSValue seemingly already does that.
I’m not a fan of CocoaTech’s new Geeklog-based site. The old version was much simpler. However, Gerhman includes a link to openSourceCMS.com, a site that has the major CMSs installed so that you can try them out.
