Re: NSObject className

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On Friday, June 7, 2002, at 02:09 PM, Stefan Urbanek wrote:

> This method is missing in NSObject:
>
> - (NSString *) className
> {
>   return NSStringFromClass([self class]);
> }

I'm not sure about this ... it's part of the new Apple scripting 
extensions,
and I decided a while back not to implement the scripting extensions:

We already have scripting solutions which are arguably better than 
Apples stuff.
Most (though not all) of the scripting extensions are pretty much 
useless for
anything else.
The scripting extensions are therefore just bloat - and I'm trying to 
*remove*
bloat from the base library, not add it!

This does seem to be the opposite of Apples approach where, as well as 
adding
new frameworks and some good APIs, they seem to be bloating existing 
APIs rather
than attempting to keep them clean/simple :-(
I guess that's proof that the NeXT software developers are not 
completely in
control at Apple.

If people want to use apple scripting in apps they port from MacOS-X to 
GNUstep,
it would make sense for them to contribute the full set of apple 
scripting extensions
as a subproject that can optionally be built as part of the base library 
or as a
separate scripting library.  I'd undertake to maintain such a subproject.

That being said ... the -className method does not depend on the 
availability of
the other extensions to be used.
Perhaps we *should* build it in to the base library even through there 
are already
two other methods of getting the class name -

name = NSStringFromClass([anObject class]);

name = [[anObject class] description];