Re: Still about bad documentation
Re: Still about bad documentation
- Subject: Re: Still about bad documentation
- From: Rainer Brockerhoff <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 10:57:05 -0200
At 12:37 +0100 13/11/2001, email@hidden wrote:
First of all I notice that the original author is Rainer
Brockerhoff. He is to some point a beginner in Cocoa, but actually
commited a great application named XRay. (And I personnaly don't
know any bug in XRay...). Should only 10% of "beginners" do the
same, MacOSX would crunch Windows 'digitas in naso pedesque super
tabulam'.
Thanks for the kind words, Thomas. May I quote this expression? :-)
Actually, there are lots of bugs, but I usually manage to find them
before my beta testers...
Well, the embedded NSText object is damnably difficult to get ahold
of,
[[myTextField window] fieldEditor:YES forObject:myTextField ]; // this is
not damnably difficult
The Field Editor <long citation about it>
Erick you just prove that it is indeed difficult. How do YOU know
where to find the method 'fieldEditor'? That's you know that there
IS a field editor, located IN THE WINDOW. Both of them are NOT
obvious at all (actually that's a huge difference between TextField
and other controls). It is so obvious to you that you didn't even
mention the origin of the citation about the field editor. So for
others, I explain: this comes from NSWindow's class documentation
(immersed in a lot of other windows attributes).
Well, first of all, Erik helped me a lot with this and other things -
as did many of other list members. You're all in my About Box, thanks
again! And one thing every older programmer has learned to do to
survive is not minding doing stupid things now and then.
I'm not sure I commented on this here on the list, but indeed at some
point I totally forgot to consider searching in the NSWindow
documentation... it seemed too far removed from my problem.
On the other hand, I at the same time remember reading about the
field editor being common to all fields - but this very word "common"
threw me off the track, since I wanted to get data from one
particular field, not data common to fields. Probably was too busy to
think this through, as I'm always solving 5 or 6 things at the same
time instead of linearly.
The point is that to find the info on this case you have to look to
three classes doc, one of them not obviously related to the problem.
Right. One of these days - after I finish XRay - I plan to sit down
and draw some huge Cocoa relationship poster "with circles and arrows
and a paragraph telling what each one is" (to misquote Arlo Guthrie).
Actually, I've been due for some time to begin writing a book about
Mac OS X - half about _developing_ for Mac OS X. (It'll be in
Brazilian Portuguese, so I'm afraid few of you here will find it any
help.) And I've been holding off on that until I understand enough of
what's going on... but I definitely want to include lots of
relationship diagrams. As I think more visually than verbally, I find
the current docs a little deficient in that regard.
Best,
--
Rainer Brockerhoff <email@hidden>
Belo Horizonte, Brazil
"Originality is the art of concealing your sources."
http://www.brockerhoff.net/ (updated Oct. 2001)