[Moderator] List guidelines and related resources
[Moderator] List guidelines and related resources
- Subject: [Moderator] List guidelines and related resources
- From: cocoa-dev-admins <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 14:33:35 -0700
Please Stay On-Topic
====================
Bear in mind that there are several thousand subscribers to the Cocoa-
dev list, including many Apple engineers. Every post in effect costs
the Cocoa community hundreds of dollars to process (and takes time
away from the engineers who might be working on the fix to your bug!).
In 2005, over 26,000 messages were sent to the list. In order to keep
the list useful and to maximise your chances of getting an answer to
your question, please stay on topic and adhere to the guidelines given
in:
"How To Ask Questions The Smart Way"
<http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html>
If someone posts a message that is off-topic, please do not reply to
the list. You should contact the sender directly or alert a
moderator. If a moderator flags a thread as closed (typically with
"EOT" in the subject line), do not continue to post to that thread.
If you post a message that is blatantly off-topic, you are liable to
be suspended.
****
List etiquette
==============
In addition to the guidelines given in "How To Ask Questions The Smart
Way", please ensure that you abide by the list rules:
<http://lists.apple.com/tc.html>
<http://lists.apple.com/tips.html>
In particular: please "Edit included messages in replies to
minimize the amount of text." There is no need, for example,
to include the list footer in your reply.
Note that you should never post to the list any message that was
sent to you
privately unless you have the original author's permission.
If you post a message to the list and do not get a reply, you
should not simply repost the message.
There may be reasons why no-one has answered, see:
<http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html>
and
<http://www.mikeash.com/getting_answers.html>
If you want to send again, add more information or background, or
explain what further steps
you have taken in the interim to solve your problem.
The following was written to address the reasons the Ruby on Rails
community isn't what it once was, but it could easily be true of any
number of communities. Please help to make sure that the cocoa-dev
list doesn't head in the same direction:
<http://www.slash7.com/pages/vampires>
Cocoa-related resources
=======================
Cocoa-related resources that may answer your question without the need
to wait for a reply from the list:
Apple's documentation
---------------------
The Cocoa Getting Started page.
If you haven't read any Cocoa documentation and want to learn
about
the technology, you should begin with this.
<http://developer.apple.com/referencelibrary/GettingStarted/GS_Cocoa/
>
Main documentation links:
<http://developer.apple.com/documentation/>
<http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Cocoa.html>
Apple produces several kinds of documentation. For an overview of how
to use the documentation, see:
<http://developer.apple.com/referencelibrary/usingreflib.html>
and
<http://developer.apple.com/macosx/newinreflibrary.html>
* Finding documentation
If you are not sure where to find documentation relevant to your
problem, a useful strategy is to go to the API reference for a
relevant class and look at its companion document. You can also
search the online documentation suite using the search field at the
top right of the page (see, for example, <http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/index.html
>). It is often a good idea to check the "Restrict to Cocoa" box.
If you need more precise search, you can use the Advanced Search panel
at <http://developer.apple.com/search/>.
Remember you can also view and search the documentation in Xcode --
see the "Help" menu. You can see all the methods associated with a
class (and links to relevant documentation) using Xcode's Class
Browser (see the Project > Class Browser menu item). In Xcode, you
can Option-double-click on a symbol to look it up in the
documentation, and you can Command-double-click on a symbol to go to
the header file in which it is declared.
* Keeping documentation up-to-date
You can keep your local documentation up-to-date by using the
Documentation update preference in Xcode. Apple's developer
documentation is updated en bloc about once a month. An update
package is made available at about the same time that updates are
published on the web site.
Code examples
-------------
Apple provides code samples in two places, on-disk (installed with the
developer tools) and online:
Developer examples
<file:///Developer/Examples/AppKit/>
ADC
<http://developer.apple.com/samplecode/>
Online resources
----------------
"UNOFFICIAL Cocoa-dev Frequently Asked Questions"
<http://www.alastairs-place.net/cocoa/faq.txt>
Especially useful for pointers to documents relating to
memory management
and book recommendations
List archives
<http://lists.apple.com/archives/cocoa-dev>
Combined Apple and Omni Cocoa developer list archives
<http://www.cocoabuilder.com/>
Cocoa-related sites
<http://www.cocoadev.com/>
<http://www.cocoadevcentral.com/>
<http://www.stepwise.com/>
Cocoa Bindings
<http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/CocoaBindings/
>
<http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Reference/CocoaBindingsRef/
>
<http://developer.apple.com/cocoa/cocoabindings.html>
<http://homepage.mac.com/mmalc/CocoaExamples/controllers.html>
<http://www.cocoadevcentral.com/articles/000080.php>
<http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/04/06/cocoa.html>
Google
<http://www.google.com/>
(It is sometimes the case that using the subject line of a post
as a search term in
Google will yield an answer. If this is the case, you have
probably not invested sufficient
effort into finding an answer to your problem, and you are likely
to receive a reprimand.)
Memory management
-----------------
Developers are strongly discouraged from attempting to reformulate
Cocoa's memory management rules in posts to the list. Almost
invariably, someone makes a subtle or not-so-subtle mistake which then
results in confusion and additional messages to resolve the issue.
Simply post links to the relevant documentation, such as:
<http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/MemoryMgmt/Tasks/MemoryManagementRules.html
>
Links to other reviewed articles that discuss memory management are
given in <http://www.alastairs-place.net/cocoa/faq.txt>
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