The reason #new currently behaves this way is to work for every object, wether it's Ruby or Cocoa. For #new to work like you expect (which I agree totally makes sense), instead of having #new aliasing [[obj alloc] init], we could alias it to [[obj alloc] initialize], and have -initialize redirect to -init on Foundation objects. I don't know how expected that would be, or if it has any drawback... Laurent, what's your take on that?
-- Thibault Martin-Lagardette On May 6, 2010, at 22:09, russell muetzelfeldt wrote: > On 07/05/2010, at 2:17 PM, Thibault Martin-Lagardette wrote: > >> Glad it works :-) >> >> The reason why your example doesn't work is because in MacRuby, String >> descends from NSString, which is a Foundation object. Foundation objects use >> "init" and not "initalize", and for syntaxic sugar reasons, #new is aliased >> to [[obj alloc] init] on Foundation objects :-). > > oh, I understand the implementation detail, I just think it's wrong for a > Ruby implementation to behave that way - this isn't just a matter of > extending Ruby syntax to support access to Obj-C but rather a change that can > break existing Ruby code... > > what I would expect in this case is for the class I've written in ruby to > have initialize called like all other classes written in ruby, and leave it > to me to correctly call the designated initializer of my superclass, which I > know is -init because I'm subclassing Obj-C code... > > >> On non-Foundation objects, #new behaves as you expect (the ruby way) > > yeah, and with things like my OpenDirectory wrapper I can live with it... but > when the behaviour of subclassing standard Ruby types differs between the > reference implementation and MacRuby I'd be calling that a bug in MacRuby... > > >> I agree this difference can be confusing, and I think it could find its >> place in a certain book *stares at Matt* > > it doesn't need documenting, it needs fixing... :) > > I guess it all depends whether you're looking at MacRuby as a new language > for writing Cocoa applications, or as a runtime for Ruby applications on > OSX... > > _______________________________________________ > MacRuby-devel mailing list > MacRuby-devel@lists.macosforge.org > http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macruby-devel _______________________________________________ MacRuby-devel mailing list MacRuby-devel@lists.macosforge.org http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macruby-devel
