Re: GNUstep ROADMAP

[Gregory John Casamento]

Richard,

--- Richard Frith-Macdonald <address@hidden> wrote:

> I'm with Fred on this one ... certainly on partially implemented  
> classes, but also (though less strongly) on completely empty ones.
> I think there is absolutely zero risk of someone wasting loads of  
> time porting only to find something critical missing... as long as  
> our documentation does not tell lies (and little chance of it even  
> then).
> We do need to make sure that the documentation is up to date, so it  
> says which methods of which classes are unimplemented.
> 
> IMO partially implemented classes tell people that there is some hope  
> of the classes being done in future ... or at least that the GNUstep  
> project would look favourably upon people contributing in those  
> areas.  In fact it would probably be good if unimplemented methods  
> actually generated an NSLog  explicitly asking for an implementation  
> to be contributed.  Maybe I should add a macro to NSDebug.h to do that?
> 
> Having a completely unimplemented class there gives us a good  
> placeholder for the documentation that tells people that the class is  
> unimplemented, and maybe what the current plans are for it.  I can  
> see the argument here for removing the class (people aren't likely to  
> think the class exists if there is no trace of it), but I think that  
> a header file that's clearly a shell, and documentation that states  
> that the class is unimplemented, is equally clear.  We could document  
> such empty classes with a note to say that someone (or nobody) is  
> working on them, and a pointer to the task list on the website for  
> current status.

Okay, you've convinced me.  I agree. :)

So long as the documentation is clear, I see no issue.

Later, GJC

Gregory John Casamento 
-- Principal Consultant, Open Logic Corp. (A MD Corp.)
## Maintainer of Gorm (IB Equiv.) for GNUstep.