Huh. Well, two things.
1) When I look at a C++ object pointer and drill down to the CFTypeRef, I get nothing. Now, maybe that's not the data formatting fault, because Xcode thinks the variable is out of scope. Here's the code:
GroundStation* gs = new GroundStation();
gs->setID(1);
gs->setName("San Carlos");
setName takes an object NString, which wraps a CFTypeRef, which is really a pointer to a CFStringRef.
At a breakpoint just after the setName() call, I can dink open gs, and get something like this:
gs
ObjectOfInterest (superclass of gs)
private
mName type: NString value: {...} summary: out of scope
NCFObject
private
mObject type: CFTypeRef value: 0x664d20 summary: <empty>
So, I don't know why the first is out of scope, but it seems to have an address for mObject, but it won't render it. Maybe that's because it can't tell what it is, but I *can* choose Print Description to Console and that prints the value of the string. Seems like it could do the same to the summary window.
2) The doc for Custom Data Formatters says "Note, however, that you cannot specify a custom format for string types, such as NSString, char*, and so on." This makes me sad, 'cause I'd really like to make one so that the top-level NString shows the string value.