Re: [Fxruby-users] OO documentation issues.

[Hugh S. S. E. E. <hg...@dm...>]

On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, Lyle Johnson wrote:

> Again, I of course agree. But I should make it clear that the FXRuby API
> reference documentation is just that, reference material. It is not
> intended as the first stop for someone learning how to use FOX or
> FXRuby, in the same way that you wouldn't want to try to learn how to
> speak French by reading a French-English dictionary.

This is a fair point, well put.  Separating these concerns is
probably a Good Thing: it will reduce coupling in the documentation.
>
> In an earlier post, I sort-of joked about an FXRuby "book" that would
> fill the sometimes large gap between the example programs and the
> reference documentation. A kind of "Programming FXRuby" or "The FXRuby
        [...]

Yes, I'd like to see this, hopefully before 2020! :-)
>
> Many of these "wider context" issues are covered in various articles at
> the FOX web site (http://www.fox-toolkit.org/doc.html). To a large
        [...]
> Once you've learned those fundamental concepts, you should find that
> they work the same throughout the library. For example, once you
> understand how FOX's message-target system works for events generated by
        [...]

Yes, I think this is true, I am beginning to get the picture, having
explored the Wiki as well.  I think the problem for me is that there
is a lot of inter-related terminology of special significance.

Things that have puzzled me about this target message sytem include:
   the target is fixed at construction time.
      In langauges like Smalltalk where OO is message passing, any
      object can pass messages to any other, as FOX can.  So fixing
      the target is only necessary because that is the most useful
      thing most of the time: if you press a given button you will
      always want the message to go to one place, or the
      circumstances are very exceptional.  Is that about right? It
      probably makes it easier in languages that are not as dynamic
      as Ruby as well.
   The messages have types and ids.
      Is this how global scope of message ids is avaoided, so that
      Multiple Inheritance (C++) or Mixin (Ruby) is achievable? Only
      the case of direct ancestry makes it necessary to adjust
      LAST_ID, then?
and that selector seems to be used for message.  I suppose there is
an analogy here with the Ruby send() method, except that one must
setup the mapping between the message and the recipient's method in
FOX, whereas this is mapping is implicit in the Ruby send coammend.

        Hugh