(foreword: yup, this should go in webobjects-talk when it's available.
This is an opinion on how Apple could improve its WO documentation.)
What WebObjects needs is not another manual, or another FAQ... what it
needs is a good cookbook! aka a patterns book. (but "cookbook" sounds so
much friendlier :)
Allow me to elaborate...
I just spent the evening pondering a component-nesting issue that's been
bugging me for several months now. I've known all this time that I'm going
about this in a bass-ackwards fashion in one of my programs, yet a
functional and elegant solution has always eluded me. But tonight I
started thinking about this again, writing down the exact things I want to
accomplish with this and going over the WO dev guide & "What's new in WO4"
doc with a fine-tooth comb. In the end I realized that the
"carat notation" for non-sync components is all I really need for this.
Or today I replied to Patrick Robinson's question on this forum, but it
seems he has a more general issue:
> Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 21:29:03 -0500 (EST)
> From: Patrick Robinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: matt kangas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: how to trim leading and trailing spaces?
> ...
> I really just want to post-process the user input value. Maybe a
> validator is where this behavior belongs, but I can't believe this
> isn't something that's much more commonly done, so that it's readily
> available.
AFAIK the common thread in these examples is that we're both looking for
some input on *strategies* and common implementations for resolving a
problem based on a set of requirements.
An aside: Does the WO documentation suck or does it not? Depends on how
you look at it. The WO Dev Guide makes for nice reading, but if you have
a "How do I?" question the answer is (IMHO) often very hard to find in
this book. Often what you really need to look it are the Foundation/EOF/WO
references, but there is no coaching to this effect... the WO Dev Guide
should at have a chapter explaining what kind of Qs are answered by the
refs and how to find/navigate them.
So, assuming this issue was resolved, there still seems to be a great need
for an "Ask the Guru" book. Yes, this list is *wonderful* for exactly this
purpose and trawling the archives is tremendously handy, but it is neither
a) concise & authorative, nor
b) an Apple publication
I think lots of people get lost in WO trying to do what seem to be "simple
things", running into a problem and not having a clue how to solve it. I
also thing this points to a deficiency in Apple's documentation which, if
resolved, would help more people grok WO more quickly.
Humbly submitted for the betterment of us all...
--
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