On 13.11.2007, at 11:21, Mike Schrag wrote:
> #2 is _NSUtilities.setClassNamed (or whatever it is) to replace
> things like WOTextField, etc. I would love to minimize/remove the
> #1-style, because these are just so complicated/nasty/quasi-legal to
> maintain, but #2 may never go away.
It would be a very nice thing, if Apple would make this an official
way to add patches. On the Wonder side, there could be properties
controlling whether patches are applied or not - this would make
changes less painful for "normal users" of Wonder as they can turn on/
off stuff by setting a property.
And all those patches should really live somewhere together (one
package?) or in one patcher class, so that it is easier to understand
and maintain. I know that the effort is made to collect them in
ERXPatcher (for dynamic elements) and the rest is mostly in the init
phase of ERXApplication but it still seems a bit clumsy that we have
to "hijack" the WO frameworks to install patches.
If we (Apple and the 3rd party framework developers) could come up
with an "Apple supported way of installing patches / replacing classes
in the core frameworks", we could do much more to make these patches
switchable and easier to understand, just because it would be not so
annoying to get them working and if you finally managed to find a way,
you don't have the time and/or energy to add sufficient documentation
and example code.
I know that Apple is not the place where outside developers have much
influence, but it would certainly help these outside developers to
have a bit more help from Apple to get the frameworks right when Apple
releases a new version of WO. The 5.4 release was - in my opinion - a
good example of how it should NOT be: the Wonder team hasn't worked on
the issues for a while because there was too much change in the core
and I guess a lot of them have the same problem I have: I just CAN'T
work on developer seeds of the OS and the tools for a couple of months
to re-write my frameworks and apps over and over as I have to do
deployments during that time and even after that release for a long
time to the the old system. I don't update my production server to the
new WO as soon as it comes out. No way. That's the reason I haven't
done more to get my stuff 5.4 ready in time for the release - I just
can't afford it.
> Like ERXUtilities, ERXComponents, ERXPatchedComponents (I'm not sure
> what it would be, just thinking "out loud" here).
We thought about that after WWDC this year right? Maybe, if we tag
something as being WO 5.3 only and the new development goes on to WO
5.4 we have a point where we have to break compatibility with old
stuff - that would be the right time to also break up the frameworks
in Wonder (ERExtensions is the obvious candidate) a bit more.
Nevertheless I have to say this again: I'm more than happy to re-work
patches, take the extra work in frameworks, change things to new APIs
and whatsoever is to do for a new WO release - just because I'm glad,
that there ARE new WO releases and so much movement at the moment. It
is just a matter of time.
Pierre: what would help me (I speak only for myself here, but others
might feel similarly), is more documentation of what has changed
between builds and versions. Something where I can look up what has
changed when I see stuff not working anymore. One linear ugly document
would be better than any nicely styled set of html pages, crosslinked,
spread over several pages, not really searchable and so on.
cug
-- http://www.event-s.net
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