learning apps development with swift in OS X

Effectively, there are very few books for OSX. And I have not found a good one !

You will learn many things with IOS books :

- Swift

- The general API structure (even if syntax if often a bit different) with most objects pretty similar, and mechanisms for actions, delegates, notification…

- XCode

So, it is no waste of time.

But the architecture of a Mac App is pretty different in general: multi windows, menus versus segueing between views in storyboard. And this point of OSX app architecture is very poorly addressed in the books I got.

Personally, I started learning for IOS.

Then, when developing my first OSX App, I used existing code as template.

For your specific point, I think the solution is to use layers

Here is a short example :

- gesture recognizer (panGesture) was added to movableView in IB

- I extracted from an existing code, hope I did not introduce errors.

class AppDelegate: NSObject, NSApplicationDelegate, NSGestureRecognizerDelegate {

    @IBOutlet weak var window: NSWindow!     // The window created with the app

    @IBOutlet weak var movableView: NSView!     // One view you can move
   
    @IBOutlet weak var underFixedView: NSView!     // a view below, that will not be cleared when movable passes over
   
    func applicationDidFinishLaunching(_ aNotification: Notification) {
        // Insert code here to initialize your application
        movableView.layer?.backgroundColor = NSColor.red.cgColor

        underFixedView.layer?.backgroundColor = NSColor.green.cgColor
}


    func applicationWillTerminate(aNotification: NSNotification) {
        // Insert code here to tear down your application
    }


    @IBAction func panView(sender: NSPanGestureRecognizer) {

        let t = sender.translation(in: window.contentView)
        sender.view?.frame = NSOffsetRect(sender.view!.frame, t.x, t.y)
        sender.setTranslation(NSPoint.zero, in: nil) // Sinon, on garde des coordonnées erratiques et l'image part dans tous les sens
    }
   
   
    func gestureRecognizer(_ gestureRecognizer: NSGestureRecognizer, shouldRecognizeSimultaneouslyWith otherGestureRecognizer: NSGestureRecognizer) -> Bool {
        return true
    }
   
}