On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 09:44 -0500, Adrian Robert wrote: > Hi, > > > also started writing some guides to using GNUstep. What I've written > > so far can be found at: > > http://members.optusnet.com.au/~smokey27/objc.pdf > > This looks very nice! Have you seen: > > http://gnustep.org/resources/documentation/Developer/Base/ > ProgrammingManual/manual_toc.html > > It might be more efficient to improve / update this (and perhaps also > make it more visible to downloaders / users of GNUstep) than starting > fresh. On the other hand, this document is rather long, and perhaps > you are shooting for a shorter document just on the basics. This > would be a good addition, assuming there aren't already references > covering this at http://gnustep.org/developers/documentation.html .
Yep, I've used the Base manual to get a better feel for what's possible with Objective-C and GNUstep. I wanted to document, in a further manual (base.pdf) how to use more obscure gnustep-base features, like calendar dates and that, and stuff that's not well documented, but important, like property lists. I definetely need to have a look at other people's docs and see what's already covered. I'd certainly like to incorporate other people's work to save rewriting what they may have already well covered. This was supposed to be more of an Objective-C introduction, but with GNUstep as the runtime library. > > http://members.optusnet.com.au/~smokey27/appkit.pdf > > This is a good start, and the GNUstep equivalent here is pretty sparse: > > http://gnustep.org/resources/documentation/Developer/Gui/ > ProgrammingManual/manual_toc.html > > Contributions on this would be more than welcome. However the > question is what the focus should be. My impression is that there > are lots of tutorials from Apple and elsewhere (http://gnustep.made- > it.com/GSPT/xml/Tutorial_en.html) on basic use of IB / Gorm to build > simple GUIs, but much fewer on the actual nuts and bolts of using the > AppKit libraries, which you need to know to get beyond toy apps. I'm > talking about Views, drawing, controllers, responder chain, matrixes, > standard and clever delegation strategies, and so on. Apple has a > lot of material here, but it tends to be divided up piecemeal and > also sometimes mixed in with Apple-specific stuff. This state is > livable, but it would be nice to have a general GNUstep intro to > using the AppKit library. My focus is to show people, coming from no experience (ie. never seen Cocoa, don't want to go near Apple) how to use GNUstep. I don't believe we should rely on Apple documentation, as we would be expected in some instances to move independently (especially if we start adding innovations they haven't. We are allowed to innovate, aren't we?). We should have documentation that stands on its own, and where I may write something from learning from the Apple documentation, I'd like something GNUstep-specific, not "go and read the Apple documentation for further info." I was hoping to really show how to do things, not just say "goto the makefile manual, read up on how to create a makefile for an app, then compile the following code and see how it works." I wanted to show them how to write the makefile, what it means, what they can add to it to customise it to their needs etc. My main gripes are with the current makefile manual, which I believe is sparse and out of date (an opinion based on experience, you may feel differently). I know I had trouble with it, trying to get things to compile under GNUstep, which should be easy, I know, but it still took me a while. Unfortunately, time will be restricted for me over the coming summer and beyond, so what I've done may be a little neglected while I take up employment for the next six months. Chris -- Christopher Armstrong <carmstrong at fastmail dot com dot au> _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnustep mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep
