Re: COCOa Complete reference
Re: COCOa Complete reference
- Subject: Re: COCOa Complete reference
- From: Scott Anguish <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 00:48:42 -0400
On Sep 21, 2005, at 10:49 PM, .::welemski::. wrote:
If that's case, does anyone have any plans to make one?
Or, can apple make its online developer documentation to be appendable
with example code? So visitor can posts and example code....
A reference wont be complete if it doesn't have any example code
given.
At the risk of stepping into my work area more than I am
comfortable.
It's unlikely that anyone outside of Apple could produce a
reference for the Cocoa frameworks in any sort of a timely fashion.
It literally takes us months and months to update the reference each
time new APIs are added. By the time an outside entity was able to
get our doc and the final API headers, they'd not have much time to
market before they'd have to start all over again.
And trust me when I say that the Cocoa book market is very, very
small.
Apple Tech Pubs (my full-time job) produces three kinds of
documentation
Reference
This is intended to be the canonical reference for all the
available classes, methods and functions. It typically does not
include example code because it is intended to be a concise
description of the APIs. It is updated as necessary with additional
information (from bugs you folks file, from feedback that we receive,
and also our own internal use of the documentation).
Conceptual
This is intended to be read through from start to finish,
and covers the basic concepts, along with additional advanced
concepts. These books often contain sample code (and that often is
increasing, as they evolve). These are typically referred to as
"Guides" in their title.
Task Books
The task books cover more specific topics that are not
necessarily going to be of interest to all developers. They're more
detailed and more specific to a sub-area of the overall conceptual
area that they cover. They typically have the word "Topic" in their
title. These books should have significant sample code where
appropriate. These items are updated more often. New tasks are
largely driven by bug reports and enhancement requests.
not all the current documentation has the conceptual and task
material separated into distinct books, often they co-mingle.
I don't know of any plan to allow visitors to augment the
official documentation with their own code. That seems like an area
that would be fraught with validation issues and would require
extensive moderation by Apple. Especially considering that our
documentation is now updated on a 6 week or so rotation.
Fortunately, there are options.
First, you can ask DTS for such a system.
Secondly, you could use www.cocoadev.com. It's a WIKI that is
run by a third party that can be augmented with example code.
Additionally, mmalc and I read this list and attempt to identify
areas in our own documentation (and in our group's documentation
responsibilities) that could benefit from clarification. This is not
part of our job responsibilities, and should not be considered as an
alternative to filing bugs.
DTS can and does publish example code. It's not restricted to our
publication schedule, and can be updated at any time. There are RSS
feeds on developer.apple.com to provide you with a heads up as far as
when those are updated. Tech Notes are also published from time to
time by DTS. Those typically cover information that is specific to a
problem or issue that is isolated to
--
"William Cheeseman ... is said not to be a doofus in real life." -
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times Online
Scott Anguish
email@hidden
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