Editing MacApp (section)

===Pascal versions===
MacApp was a direct descendant of the [[Lisa Toolkit]], Apple's first effort in designing an object-oriented application framework, led by [[Larry Tesler]]. The engineering team for the Toolkit included Larry Rosenstein, Scott Wallace, and Ken Doyle. Toolkit was written in a custom language known as [[Clascal]], which added object-oriented techniques to the [[Pascal (programming language)|Pascal]] language.<ref name=byte1984_12>{{cite magazine
| magazine  = [[Byte (magazine)|Byte]]
| url       = https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-12-rescan/page/n136/mode/1up
| title     = Software Frameworks
| first     = Gregg
| last      = Williams
| pages     = 124–127, 394–410
| volume    = 9
| number    = 13
| date      = December 1984
}}</ref><ref name=byte1988_12>{{cite magazine
| magazine  = [[Byte (magazine)|Byte]]
| url       = https://archive.org/details/BYTE-1988-12/page/n353/mode/1up
| title     = Program Extenders
| pages     = MAC 53-MAC 60
| date      = December 1988
| volume    = 13
| issue     = 13
| first     = Laurence H.
| last      = Loeb
}}</ref>

Initially, development for the Mac was carried out using a cross-compiler in Lisa Workshop. As Mac sales effectively ended Lisa sales, an effort began to build a new development platform for the Mac. Lisa Programmer's Workshop became in 1985 the [[Macintosh Programmer's Workshop]], or MPW. As part of this process, Clascal was updated to become [[Object Pascal]] and Lisa Toolkit offered design notes for what became MacApp.<ref name=byte1988_12 />

Writing a Mac program without an application framework is not an easy task, but at the time the [[object-oriented programming]] field was still relatively new and considered somewhat suspect by many developers. Early frameworks tended to confirm this suspicion, being large, slow, and typically inflexible.

MacApp was perhaps the first truly usable framework in all meanings of the term. Compiled applications were quite reasonable in terms of size and [[memory footprint]], and the performance was not bad enough to make developers shy from it. Although "too simple" in its first releases, a number of follow-up versions quickly addressed the main problems. By this point, around 1987, the system had matured into a useful tool, and a number of developers started using it on major projects.

MacApp 2.0 was released in 1989. Among the improvements was a simplification of some of the UI element interactions, and support for Multifinder.<ref name=mw1089_04>{{cite magazine |title=C++ and MacApp 2.0 |journal=[[Macworld]] |date=April 1989 |volume=5 |issue=4 |page=91 |url=https://archive.org/details/MacWorld_8904_April_1989/page/n92/mode/1up |first=Lon |last=Poole
}}</ref> As Apple announced it was dropping MPW Pascal support in 1992,<ref name=mt1995_11>
{{cite magazine
| magazine = [[MacTech]]
| url      = https://archive.org/details/eu_MacTech-1995-11/page/n31/mode/1up
| title    = MacApp Pascal Rides again
| date     = November 1995
| volume   = 11
| issue    = 11
| pages    = 30–31
| first1   = Brian
| last1    = Arnold
| first2   = Guy
| last2    = McCarthy
}}
</ref> this version didn't get updated, not even with System 7 support, and Pascal developers were left out on their own to port MacApp 2.0 to the PowerPC.<ref name=mt1995_11 /><ref name=mt1996_02>{{cite magazine
| magazine = [[MacTech]]
| pages    = 25–32
| url      = https://archive.org/details/eu_MacTech-1996-02_OCR/page/n26/mode/1up
| title    = MacApp 2 for PowerPC in Object Pascal
| date     = February 1996
| first    = Brian
| last     = Arnold
| volume   = 12
| issue    = 2
}}</ref>