Hello, everyone. As you may know I have written a basic code completion system and documentation-lookup command for TextMate(^M and^H). I have also finished a definition look up system for Cocoa(suggestion for key-trigger appreciated). The solution I have used is to look up every method in a gzipped list and accessing it from ruby via the shell command zgrep. Since I want the system to work with more than just cocoa I thought I tell anyone interrested so that they can give me their opinions. Currently the list is formatted in the following way:

[methodName][tab][framework][tab][behavior][tab][Class][tab][methodtype][tab][returnType]([tab][arg])[newline]

ofcourse if there are more args, then the parenthesis is repeated, and if there is no arg the whole parenthesis is omitted. hopefully the following ruby dict explains the various abbreviations. {:AppKit => "AK", :CoreData => "CD", :CoreImage => "CI", :Foundation => "F", :instancemethods=> "im", :classmethods => "cm", :classes=> "Cl", :protocols => "Pr", :delegatemethods => "dm", :notifications => "no"}

behaviours are either classes or protocols, methodtypes are either instancemethods delegatemethods notifications or classmethods.

displayMode AK Cl NSToolbar im NSToolbarDisplayMode propertyForKey: F Cl NSStream im id NSString * textUnfilteredFileTypes F Cl NSAttributedString cm NSArray * textUnfilteredPasteboardTypes F Cl NSAttributedString cm NSArray * textView:clickedOnLink:atIndex: AK Cl NSTextView dm BOOL NSTextView * id unsigned

when looking up methods for completion and documentation this is all the information I need for my uses. The problem comes when doing declaration lookup, since not all classes are declared in a file with the same name and there are categories and so on. Currently I am using an xml dump from AppKido converted into a ruby dict using crazy gsub commands. Unfortunately the appkido parser is a little wacky, so I thought that I would ask the list for help. What is needed is a file or a script that generates the file according to the spec above, but when a method is declared in a file that does not correspond to the class name, the filename should be written after the Class using a separator that is not a tab (; perhaps). If anyone see a problem coming up with this approach please say so, if you have any other critisism feel free to add it. Hopefully this layout contains enough parameters should someone want to write completion and lookup commands for pyobjc or rubycocoa. Perhaps it would be smart to come up with a name for an index file, containing your own indexed methods, that will be automatically picked up by the various completion and look-up tmCommands.

Joachim Mårtensson