Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!swbatl!pooh_corner!gilstrap
From: gilstrap@pooh_corner.sbc.com (Brian R. Gilstrap)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: How do I get the MacApp/C++ browser?
Message-ID: <1990Nov8.134412.22760@swbatl.sbc.com>
Date: 8 Nov 90 13:44:12 GMT
References: <b.ALR4VN@outpost.UUCP> <46369@apple.Apple.COM>
Sender: usenet@swbatl.sbc.com (0000-news(0000))
Reply-To: gilstrap@pooh_corner.sbc.com (Brian R. Gilstrap)
Organization: Southwestern Bell
Lines: 54


In article <46369@apple.Apple.COM>, jordan@Apple.COM (Jordan Mattson) writes:
|> Actually, the name of Mouser has been changed to MacBrowse.....

Hmmmm, does it have more capabilities than the Mouser that shipped with
MacApp 2.0?  In particular, Mouser doesn't seem to handle inline member
functions which have the body in the '.h' file but not in the class
declaration.  All I get is the declaration line from the class itself,
which doesn't help much.  I like to declare my member functions which are
inline in the class, but put the implementations at the bottom of the '.h'
file to avoid cluttering the class definition.  I also noticed that Mouser
doesn't distinguish between overloaded operators which take different
argument types.  For example, a simple test string class I wrote has the
"<=" operator (or an inline friend function) for all combinations of C string
or Pascal string, and the string class.  However, in the method/member-function
panel in the browser, it's just a list of 5 or so "<="s without any typing
information or anything.  Ideally, the list would look more like:

const Str & <= const char *
const Str & <= const PascalString
const char * <= const Str &
const PascalString <= const Str &
...

Or perhaps like this (my favorite):

<=( const Str &, const char * )
<=( const Str &, const char * )
<=( const Str &, const PascalString )
<=( const char *, const Str & )
<=( const PascalString, const Str & )
...

What's particularly nice about this second approach is that all MacBrowse
has to do is grab the text of the declaration (between the parens) and use
that rather than just the operator name itself.  So, in theory at least
(we all know how theory relates to practice) it ought to be a near-trivial
change.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's neat that Mouser supports C++ at all.  But
I'm wondering if MacBrowse has even greater support, primarily because Mouser
in its current incarnation (as far as I've seen it) is definitely headed in
the right direction but doesn't quite have all the functionality needed.
However, to avoid sounding like a grouch, let me note that it is definitely
*neat* that you can edit the method/member-function definitions and
implementations in the browser itself.

Anyway, if anyone can tell me yea or nay about MacBrowse and/or perhaps pass on
my suggestions to whomever is working on MacBrowse, I'd appreciate it.

Brian R. Gilstrap
gilstrap@pooh_corner.tri.sbc.com
gilstrap@swbatl.sbc.com
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