This document is intended to present a comprehensive and updated list of any global method, module, class, constant and error code that could be of interest for a developer using the QTPlugin services.
If you need just a quick reminder to a parameter of a method or a property of a class or something like this that you can not remember, you are in the right place.
The documentation about the class hierarchy has been rearranged in such way that the classes are grouped by functional area rather than their position into the hierarchy itself; this should make easier to find about which objects are necessary to accomplish a specific task.
If you are looking for detailed informations about plugin classes, global methods or anything else, you should take a look to other documents provided with the QTPlugin.
Detailed technical informations can be found at the documentation.
The page provides an updated list of changes, bug fixes, and new features introduced with the latest plugin version.
The page provides a summary of the plugin features grouped by functional areas.
The plugin let you access to the QuickTime multimedia architecture by using either static methods and classes (aka modules) or built–in objects. Even if QTPlugin does not add any new control to the Realbasic IDE, nevertheless, some of the plugin classes implement events: objects instantiated from such a classes can be dragged onto the interface (like any other control) and used directly from there.
The latest QTPlugin APIs include 199 classes, 4 modules and a handful of static methods (see the paragraph below for notes about using global methods).
You can use global methods to perform well defined and, often limited, tasks in a straightforward way. Though, you will gain deeper access to the QuickTime API using plugin objects; in fact, you will notice that, often, global methods will require them as parameters as well.
Following the indications from RealSoftware that discourage the usage of global methods in favor of modules, any global method implemented by the QTPlugin has been deprecated (in a few cases removed) and should not be used anymore in new projects. Developers that make use of QTPlugin global methods in their code are strongly recommended to substitute them with the alternative methods provided by the plugin to accomplish the same tasks. The document provides an exahustive list of the parts of the plugin API that have been deprecated or removed.
In the Cocoa version (available since version 6.6 of the QTPlugin) global methods have been definitely removed. In the other versions, the global methods will gradually removed from the plugin as new versions of it come out.
With the exception of modules, providing general purpose helper facilities, objects in QTPlugin are arranged in a hierarchy. This means that an object inherits the properties, methods, and events (if available) of its super class (the classes above it in the hierarchy) and may contain properties, methods, and events that are unique to the object. A , for example, is a subclass of a which, in turn, is derived from which is a subclass of (the base class for all of the plugin objects).
Note that not all the classes can be instantiated and used; some of them are "abstract", that is declare common properties and methods that will be implemented by their subclasses.
In this document, as in any other plugin reference document, each class’s super class (and all other classes above it in the hierarchy) is given; the properties, methods, and events of its super class (and all other classes above it in the hierarchy) are available to that class.
The provides a graphical representation of the hierarchy of the plugin classes.