[TxMt] Searching the Objective-C documentation

dreamcat7 dreamcat7 at googlemail.com
Thu Jan 1 13:56:11 UTC 2009


Hi,
Following from an different email thread earlier this year. Link:
http://www.nabble.com/Searching-for-Objective-C-documentation-td16722396.html

As some of you know, Textmate has this very good script for performing  
correctly the searches on Apple Docset with the /Developer/usr/bin/ 
docsetutil tool.

The command is bound to Ctrl - h, and will also search the unix man  
(3) pages.
Offers a multiple - selection popup.

To access this feature you must type in and select the word into your  
document before proceeding. However it strikes me that adding an  
alternative method to use the script (probably a Search box) could be  
useful.

There;s nothing wrong with the Ctrl - h shortcut just that its rather  
cumbersome if you are searching
speculatively for a series of related classes. For that we really can  
prefer an open Search box where
the choices are typed in, without affecting / editing the current open  
document.

Basically any improvement of the current functionality thats going to  
let me stay inside TextMate and
not lead me to an external program or tool such as AppKiDo. Actually  
there also used to be QuickSilver + Developer Documentation Plugin,  
but that was broken since the Docset format came in.

Perhaps something like the "Select Bundle Item" window (Ctrl-Cmd-T),  
which can be toggled visible / invisible and left open for multiple  
searches would be the best way to go.

My ruby is - 0/0 unfortunately so cannot put up any code myself for  
what i am trying to propose here. But anyway the relevant place to go  
is file docset_query.rb

There could be an obstacle because how should we handle multiple  
results?
Of course already there is a place already in the Ctrl-H cmd where the  
mini selection list pop-up is shown.

http://svn.textmate.org/trunk/Bundles/Objective-C.tmbundle/Support/lib/docset_query.rb
Function "def show_document (results, query)"

If we write a new command in this file and choose not to call this  
above function, then its going to mean that we can use other existing  
function definition in the ruby script and we can bypass the showing  
of the results mini- pop-up window, right ?

Or perhaps we will need some kind of re-write because there another  
place at the beginning of the file where "the selected word" is used  
for input? Would we want a different input going into a new ruby  
function. The user input is probably going to be from a search box.  
And later we must print any multiple search results (called 'results'  
array). Printed back into e.g. an NSTableview of the bottom half of  
our search box.

I cannot find any existing feature improvement / request for this yet,  
but still looking.


Cheers
Gulliver

dreamcat7
dreamcat7 at googlemail.com





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