Re: what's an NSZone?
Re: what's an NSZone?
- Subject: Re: what's an NSZone?
- From: Matt Neuburg <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2002 09:43:19 -0800
On Fri, 15 Feb 2002 12:35:54 -0800, Matt Neuburg <email@hidden> said:
>
Lots of methods require an NSZone parameter. But NSZone isn't documented
>
anywhere. Sure, there's a header file, but it remains unclear how you'd
>
ever "say" a zone (other than to ask an existing object or class for *its*
>
zone). It seems to me there's a piece of the documentation puzzle simply
>
missing. m.
Many thanks for the interesting info on this.
Going back to my original question - isn't there someone on this list whose
job is to think about what's wrong with the docs? This is a perfect
example. Since there are methods that refer to a class called NSZone, there
needs to be a document called NSZone.html. In fact, let me go further. This
scattering of the class documents in more than one place is confusing. The
AppKit / Foundation distinction is not inherently obvious to beginners.
There should be ONE folder with one NSxxx.html document per class. And
while we're at it, combine informal protocol documents with their class.
There is no reason whatever why the info on NSObject needs to be spread out
over several documents. Also, the reason I couldn't find the NSZone methods
is that they are all global functions; you have to look in
FoundationFunctions.html. This is confusing from a documentation
perspective - one more place to look when you've already tried three or
four other places, and I'm always forgetting to look there. We've got
hyperlinks here, oh mighty doc person, so couldn't we please have a few?
Why shouldn't the documentation do the organizing for us rather than
forcing us to search through everything every time?
Going beyond documentation, in fact, I'd like to question this last matter
from an object-orientation perspective. In brief: Why do global functions
exist at all? Couldn't all the zone-related functions here, for instance,
be class methods on NSZone? Maybe I'm way off the deep end here, but in an
object-oriented world my natural expectation when I want to create an
NSZone is that I would be talking to the NSZone class about this. And so on
for all such global functions. m.
--
matt neuburg, phd = email@hidden,
http://www.tidbits.com/matt
pantes gar anthropoi tou eidenai oregontai phusei
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