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Re: New Tiger dictionary format example posted
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Re: New Tiger dictionary format example posted


  • Subject: Re: New Tiger dictionary format example posted
  • From: has <email@hidden>
  • Date: Wed, 4 May 2005 19:03:19 +0100

Shane Stanley wrote:

> >Paradoxically, subclasses still
> >insist on listing elements already inherited from parent classes, which
> >is completely redundant duplicate information. Automatically stripping
> >that junk would significantly shorten dictionaries (e.g. see my
> >HTMLDictionary app which already does this).
>
>I disagree. In fact, I'm not sure where you're seeing this happen,

Pretty much every scriptable application there is, unfortunately (see 'historical' note below).


>except in Script Debugger, where it's an option much appreciated by many users.

Apologies, I wasn't clear. Long boring clarification follows:

When viewing the entire dictionary, or at least a significant chunk of it, the duplication-free form should be the standard representation. Including all inherited properties and elements in every class there produces obscenely huge listings for larger apps that are a bear to navigate and horribly slow to render; complete information overload to the point of uselessness. When viewing a single class in isolation then I agree, it's best to mix in all inherited properties and elements.

Now, there's a historical problem with aete resources in that while developers don't re-list inherited properties in subclasses, they do re-list inherited elements. No idea why, and there's no good reason for doing it, but they do it anyway. This means a "dumb" dictionary viewer (e.g. SE's or Smile's) always ends up showing all that extra junk whether its helpful or not. The ideal solution would be for developers not to have put all that redundant crap in in the first place, but even if they start doing it the right way now (as the SIG advises) it won't help users any when viewing older apps.

Therefore, the practical solution is for the dictionary viewer's aete parser to automatically strip all duplicate entries out of the aete when parsing it. Once it's eliminated all the junk, this "smart" viewer can then re-mix the remaining information as it sees fit. For example, appscript's HTML dictionary renderer, which renders an entire dictionary as a single HTML file, sensibly omits all duplication (otherwise apps like System Events would produce multi-MB HTML files that are totally unreadable; I've tried it). Whereas its built-in interactive help system includes all inherited properties and elements when you view an individual class definition. (Appscript's dictionary viewers were partly inspired by SD, BTW.:)

HTH

has
--
http://freespace.virgin.net/hamish.sanderson/
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