Re: API for next stable release of base library

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 18 Oct 2006, at 13:04, Marko Riedel wrote:

> Hello there,
>
> I hope you do not plan to remove your web proxy code from NSURL*,  
> as that
> will break Ticker.app.
>
> What's your take on this?
>
> Judging by the weblogs on GNUstep.it, Ticker.app seems to do its  
> share of
> drawing people to GNUstep.
>
> Best regards,

I use Ticker.app all the time ... it's a great little utility.

Specifically, my take on the proxy code in NSURL is that the existing  
mechanism should probably go away some day ...
but not soon, and not before we have a replacement mechanism.

My reasoning for this is that the existing proxy support was written  
as a necessary add-on  before Apple/MacOS-X had any proxy support at  
all, but now Apple has a completely rewritten and changed version of  
the URL handling classes, and their new implementation does provide  
proxy support.

Since we want to maintain MacOS-X compatibility, we need to implement  
their new URL system ... and there is a task registered in the  
GNUstep project in savannah to do this implementation, waiting for  
volunteers (I've done some of the work but it's far from complete).

Once that is done, it would seem to make sense to migrate existing  
applications over to use the new system ... so apps would be more  
portable.

On a more general point, I certainly do not 'plan' to remove it  
(except in the very vague sense mentioned above), and in fact do not  
'plan' to remove any public API specifically at this point (apart  
perhaps from the rather trivial GSFindFiles()).
What I was hoping to achieve with the email starting this thread was  
to establish a feel for what functionality people use or don't use  
and an idea of how(/if) we want to clean up the API.

I think a guiding principles should be to consider removing  
extensions which are trivially implemented (eg less than one screen  
(25 lines) of simple code) using standard API, and certainly to avoid  
adding any such extensions, but I'd like to know what other people  
think.
I'd also like to know about ideas for reorganising poorly designed  
API and/or adding methods which complement existing functionality and  
are not easy for a developer to add in their own applications.