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/*!

    \page qtmac-as-native.html

    \title Qt is Mac OS X Native

    \brief An explanation of Qt's native features on Mac OS X.

    \ingroup platform-specific

    This document explains what makes an application native on Mac OS X.

    It shows the areas where Qt is compliant, and the grey areas where

    compliance is more questionable. (See also the document 

    \l{mac-differences.html}{Qt for Mac OS X - Specific Issues}.)

    Normally when referring to a native Mac application, one really means an

    application that talks directly to the underlying window system, rather

    than one that uses some intermediary (for example Apple's X11 server, or a

    web browser). Qt applications run as first class citizens, just like

    Cocoa, and Carbon applications. In fact, we use Carbon and HIView

    internally to communicate with OS X.

    When an application is running as a first class citizen, it means that

    it can interact with specific components of the Mac OS X experience:

    \tableofcontents

    \section1 The Global Menu Bar

    Qt does this via the QMenuBar abstraction. Mac users expect to

    have a menu bar at the top of the screen and Qt honors this.

    Additionally, users expect certain conventions to be respected, for

    example the application menu should contain About, Preferences,

    Quit, etc. Qt handles this automatically, although it does not

    provide a means of interacting directly with the application menu.

    (By doing this automatically, Qt makes it easier to port Qt

    applications to other platforms.)

    \section1 Aqua

    This is a critical piece of Mac OS X (documentation can be found at

    \l{http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/index.html}).

    It is a huge topic, but the most important guidelines for GUI

    design are probably these:

    \list

    \i \e{Aqua look}

      As with Cocoa/Carbon, Qt provides widgets that look like those

      described in the Human Interface Descriptions. Qt's widgets use

      Appearance Manager on Mac OS X 10.2 and the new HIThemes on Mac OS X 10.3

      and higher to implement the look, in other words we use Apple's own API's

      for doing the rendering.

    \i \e{Aqua feel}

      This is a bit more subjective, but certainly Qt strives to

      provide the same feel as any Mac OS X application (and we

      consider situations where it doesn't achieve this to be bugs).

      Of course Qt has other concerns to bear in mind, especially

      remaining cross-platform. Some "baggage" that Qt carries is in

      an effort to provide a widget on a platform for which an

      equivelant doesn't exist, or so that a single API can be used to

      do something, even if the API doesn't make entire sense for a

      specific widget.

    \i \e{Aqua guides}

      This is the most subjective, but there are many suggestions and

      guidelines in the Aqua style guidelines. This is the area where Qt is

      of least assistance. The decisions that must be made to conform (widget

      sizes, widget layouts with respect to other widgets, window margins,

      placement of OK and Cancel, etc) must be made based on the user

      experience demanded by your application. If your user base is small or

      mostly comes from the Windows or Unix worlds, these are minor issues much

      less important than trying to make a mass market product. Qt for Mac OS X

      is fully API compatible with Qt for Windows and X11, but Mac OS X is a

      significantly different platform to Windows and some special

      considerations must be made based on your audience.

    \endlist

    \section1 Dock

    Interaction with the dock is possible. The icon can be set by calling

    QWidget::setWindowIcon() on the main window in your application. The

    setWindowIcon() call can be made as often as necessary, providing an

    icon that can be easily updated.

    \omit

    It is also possible to set a QMenu as the dock menu through the use of the

    qt_mac_set_dock_menu() function.

    \endomit

    \section1 Accessiblity

    Although many users never use this, some users will only interact with your

    applications via assistive devices. With Qt the aim is to make this

    automatic in your application so that it conforms to accepted practice on

    its platform. Qt uses Apple's accessibility framework to provide access

    to users with diabilities.

    \section1 Development Tools

    Mac OS X developers expect a certain level of interopability

    between their development toolkit and the platform's developer

    tools (for example Visual Studio, gmake, etc). Qt supports both Unix

    style Makefiles, and ProjectBuilder/Xcode project files by using

    the \l qmake tool. For example:

    \snippet doc/src/snippets/code/doc_src_qtmac-as-native.qdoc 0

    will generate an Xcode project file from project.pro. With \l qmake

    you do not have to worry about rules for Qt's preprocessors (\l moc

    and \l uic) since \l qmake automatically handles them and ensures that

    everything necessary is linked into your application.

    Qt does not entirely interact with the development environment (for

    example plugins to set a file to "mocable" from within the Xcode

    user interface). Nokia is actively working on improving Qt's

    interoperability with various IDEs.

*/