Cocoa: application vs. document-based application?

[g3joel]

What is the difference between the two? Can a normal cocoa application still create a .plist file? Which of the two would be best to use for certain applications?

Would it be fair to say that the features of a document-based application are just a superset of those of a normal application?

I'm a bit confused

Thanks in advance

[brianleahy]

Yes, a document-based app has a superset of non-doc-based classes and features.

Non-doc-based apps still have access to the full Cocoa framework, and can still read and write files of basically any kind.

However, if you create the project as document-based, project builder creates a basic shell "MyDocument" class (and .nib file) that you can modify to your liking.