Seems to be exactly what I was looking for. Somehow it's not that easy to find a good explanation of these techniques. I tried old graphic programming books, but their sections on GUI are tiny.
Read the original Inside Macintosh, since that's about as fundamental and basic as it gets. See how they did the API for the Event, Window, and Control Mangers.
Read the original Inside Macintosh, since that's about as fundamental and basic as it gets. See how they did the API for the Event, Window, and Control Mangers.