Quartz Composer

Quartz Composer Quartz Composer, one of the development tools provided in Xcode 2.2, is a graphical interface to the filters constructed by Apple that we used in the Filters tutorial. To examine the differences between a graphical user interface and the techniques you use in a programming context, we'll take a short look at Quartz Composer and compare it with what did in the Filters tutorial.

Example Quartz Composer compositions

The data file that Quartz Composer reads and writes is called a "composition." The filename a has an extension of "qtz". Download these five example compositions which will be using to talk about Quartz Composer: example_1.qtz example_2.qtz example_3.qtz example_4.qtz example_5.qtz

The pathname of the Quartz Composer application is:

    /Developer/Applications/Graphics Tools/Quartz Composer.app

You can double-click on the Quartz Composer icon, or enter this in a shell:

    open -a "Quartz Composer"

Notice that the quotation marks (") are necessary because "Quartz Composer" has a space character in its name.

You can also open a composition directly from the shell. The open command makes an association between the .qtz file and Quartz Composer.

    open example_1.qtz

Quartz Composer and programming languages

Take a look at the way in which comparisons are made between Quartz Composer and a programming language in the Patches and Glossary sections of its documentation.