Re: New ProjectCenter Icons

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 11 Sep 2007, at 07:00, Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
> My argumentation is for b), because it would allow features that  
> are quite difficult to integrate or operate in approach a) like:
>
> * single "edit" window in PC for all kinds of project components -  
> without switching applications

I actually prefer to have separate, apps for editing different  
things ... then their gui can be better tailored to the specific task.

> * project wide "Search" including NIBs

You could have a standard search API ... distributed objects lets you  
ask each app to search documents handled by that app.  I don't know  
why NeXT never did that (or why Apple haven't added it).

> * double-click on a Class in the NIB editor will jump to the  
> @interface in Source file
> * double-click on Action method will jump to the @implementation in  
> Source
> * NIB editor simply "knows" the IBActions a class provides
> * NIB editor simply knows the IBOutlets a class provides
> * dragging an image on a NIB adds the file to the sources
> * etc.

All the above can be easily done by having one app send a distributed  
notification which another app observes.
eg. if you want project center to select a class in its editor, it  
just needs to watch for the notification saying that the class has  
been clicked on.

> I know that this is quite a shift away from the original NextStep  
> approach, but why not try if we can make life easier for the  
> developers?

I think the beauty of the NeXTstep approach is that it provides rich,  
easy to use, interprocess communication (NeXTstep was really designed  
around that) ... apps can ask each other to do jobs for them and can  
send notifications that other interested apps can observe ... so you  
can provide an integrated development experience using a variety of  
smaller applications rather than having to have a single huge  
monolithic application.  You get the best of both worlds.