D/Objective-C Preliminary Design

[Michel Fortin]

On 2010-11-04 04:14:41 -0400, Anders F Björklund <afb at algonet.se> said:

> Michel Fortin wrote:
>> But the issue isn't the underscore, it's the verbosity of Objective-C
>> method names. Method names in Objective-C tend to be long and
>> expressive, they are meant to have the arguments interleaved between
>> each part of the selector. This interleaving makes Objective-C code very
>> natural to read. Remove that and you've got something that doesn't read
>> well and on top of that looks out of place in a D program.
> 
> The JavaBridge had lots of those functions, while it was alive:
> 
> http://developer.apple.com/legacy/mac/library/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/Legacy/JavaBridge/JavaBridge.pdf

-(void)setObject:(id)anObject 
> 
> forKey:(id)aKey;
> 
> void setObjectForKey(Object anObject, Object aKey);

Well, if you read closely that document, you'll see that they map Java 
function names to selectors manually too. The Java classes are 
generated from .jobs files, and in a .jobs file you'll find mapping for 
selectors:

"""
selector
	Specifies any non-default mappings between Objective-C selectors and 
Java method names. (The default is to use the Objective-C name before 
the colon as the Java name.) These mappings apply to all classes. Note: 
Put all of the mappings under a single selector specification.

selector
	-defineClass:withName: = defineClassWithName
	-pathForResource:ofType: = pathForResourceType
"""

I think a similar approach should be taken for tools that create 
bindings. Which means that by default it picks the first part of the 
selector as the function's name, but if you defined a custom mapping 
then it'll use that instead.


-- 
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://michelf.com/