[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: Wed, 16 May 2007 13:46:45 -0700
Please stay on-topic
====================
In 2006, over 21,000 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>
Other Apple mailing lists that may be more appropriate for some
questions are listed at:
<http://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo>
in particular see:
Xcode-users: <http://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/xcode-users>
The Omni Group hosts a general Mac OS X developer list:
<http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-dev>
There is a Yahoo Group for discussion of business-related issues at:
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/macsb/>
The list is not a feedback channel for Apple. If you have any
complaints about, suggestions for, or other general issues with
Apple's development tools and frameworks, you should contact Apple's
Developer Technical Support:
<http://developer.apple.com/technicalsupport/>
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.
Do not abuse your NDA
=========================
Do not discuss Mac OS X Leopard development related issues on this
list. Mac OS X Leopard seeds are made available to you under NDA and
you are not allowed to discuss them on any public mailing list.
List etiquette
==============
When you post a message, bear in mind that you are asking several
thousand people to listen to what you're saying. 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.
Before posting a question, please check the list archives (see "Online
resources" below) and try searching Google. Many questions have been
asked before and have already been answered.
When you ask a question, whenever possible please:
1. Describe what your high-level goal is
2. Include any relevant code
3. If appropriate, include URLs to screenshots
For more details, see:
<http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html>
and
<http://www.mikeash.com/getting_answers.html>
When posting a new question, please do not use your mail application
to reply to an existing thread -- create a new message with a new
subject line -- otherwise readers who are not interested in the thread
to which you reply may not see your question.
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 the references above. 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.
You should never post to the list any message that was sent to you
privately unless you have the original author's permission.
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/>
(The examples at each location are different.)
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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