[Pyobjc-dev] Supporting (NSString **) API (and the like)

[Bill B. <bb...@co...>]

I ran across the need to call...

     - (BOOL)getInfoForFile:(NSString *)fullPath application:(NSString 
**)appName type:(NSString **)type;

... today.  Obviously, the appName and type parameters pose a problem.  
  Instead of trying to magically wrap 'em, how about simply creating a 
category on [in this case] NSWorkspace that offers...

     - (NSDictionary *) pyobjcGetInfoForFile: (NSString *) fullPath;

... and the implementation simply returns a dictionary with the keys 
'application' and 'type'?

The 'pyobjc' prefix will prevent namespace collisions and using a 
category will continue to associate the functionality with the class.

(I did the same thing years ago when writing PyServices w/PyObjC under 
OpenStep 4.2 -- it works quite well and is easy to maintain.  Since we 
pretty much have to do case-by-case support on the methods anyway, this 
doesn't add that much maintenance overhead.)

This would seem to be easier than the implementation found in 
_AppKitMapping.m...?

I committed changes to setup.py and the AppKit module as an example;  
see NSWorkspaceSupport.m in Modules/AppKit/.  If there is a better way, 
feel free to rip it out and make changes.  I went ahead and committed 
because (a) the change is isolated, (b) it works with a minimal amount 
of code that is quite straightforward in its implementation and (c) I 
needed support for NSWorkspace in something else I'm working on (as 
long as support continues to exist in whatever form, I don't care what 
the implementation looks like).

b.bum