Re: EOF Advocacy, Open Source?
Re: EOF Advocacy, Open Source?
- Subject: Re: EOF Advocacy, Open Source?
- From: Eric Peyton <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 15:07:58 -0500
On Tuesday, August 14, 2001, at 02:42 PM, Finlay Dobbie wrote:
On Tuesday, August 14, 2001, at 01:07 am, Scott Anguish wrote:
For example.. there are areas that Apple should take the lead in,
that many apps required, and will give Cocoa developers a further
advantage. In many cases this code already exists within Apple or in
Private Frameworks. I.E. HTML, POP, IMAP, SMTP.
There are lots of private frameworks that Apple really should make
public. It's silly, really. All that functionality is there, but if we
want to use it we are supposed to re-invent the wheel.
I suppose it's probably because the APIs are changing, or something.
Or difficult to use (i.e. not documented), or on the road to going away,
or poorly implemented in the first place, or Apple just doesn't want to
support that SPI long term, or there is not time to clean the framework,
document it, test it, etc. There are dozens of reasons why certain
API's are not public. Supporting an API "forever" is a difficult and
thankless task. Certain SPI's, if exposed, could lead to a support
nightmare which would not allow Apple to move along as easily with the
future of computing technology. (Certain proprietary antiquated
operating systems have had this problem repeatedly in the past).
(Writing an SPI for a single application or group of applications is
orders of magnitude easier than writing a publishable API. If you know
your only application, then the SPI can be tailored and small errors in
design can be easily handled in either the app or the framework. If you
have to write a framework for public consumption - that possibly
commercial apps would run on top of, you do NOT want errors in said API
or the implementation underneath that API.)
Trust me when I say that what SPI is exposed as API is carefully thought
out, goes through a peer and technological review, and is exposed
(hopefully) for the right reasons. There are things that slip through
the cracks and some things that just need to be out there in some form
or another, but for the most part, the API's in OS X that are public are
that way for a reason, as are the SPI's that are still private.
Eric
-- Finlay
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