From: Jim Freeze <jim@...>
Date: 2005-10-06T05:17:14+09:00
Subject: Re: RybyCocoa (was The definitive GUI for Ruby)

On 10/5/05, Rich Morin <rdm@cfcl.com> wrote:
> You may be interested to know about
>
>   RubyCocoa - A Ruby/Objective-C Bridge for Mac OS X with Cocoa
>   http://rubycocoa.sourceforge.net/doc
>
>    *  Objective-C has its own naming conventions and method invocation
>       syntax, which are quite different from those used by Ruby, Python,
>       etc.  In CamelBones, this means that the programmer has to look up
>       methods by "translated" names, etc.

From my limited experience, there is a straightforward pattern to
follow to convert from OC to Ruby. For example, from the tutorial:

  [oPanel runModalForDirectory:self file:nil types nil]

becomes

  oPanel.runModalForDirectory_file_types(self, nil, nil)


"The other technique can be used to make a little more sense of method
names that are extremely long. Using this technique, the method name
consists of everything in the Objective-C method's name up to the
first detached parameter name. The rest of the parameter names are
moved into the argument list. Thus, every argument after the first is
prefaced with another argument that is a Ruby symbol with the same
name as the parameter it represents. It sounds confusing, I know, but
the example below shows you how easy it is once you get used to the
syntax."

And, when standard calls return an NSArray or NSString, just use
#to_a and #to_s to convert them to ruby.

--
Jim Freeze