Where can I improve Apple documentation?

Question

More often than I hoped, I seem to come across definitions of methods / properties in the Apple documentation, which at best do not make sense to me, at worst. For example, take the following method description from the NSNumberFormatter Class Reference :

---

setPartialStringValidationEnabled:

Sets whether a partial row check is performed for the receiver.

 - (void)setPartialStringValidationEnabled:(BOOL)b 

Options

b YES if partial string checking is enabled, otherwise NO.

---

So, let's assume that the crappy educational system I went through and any previous projects I worked on did not cover Cocoa's “partial string check”, and I would like to dig a little more into it to see what it is about property. Where to look (besides Google)? I am eager to discuss forums so that I can easily find myself.

I came across situations like this enough time that I think that I may be misplacing Apple docs. Any suggestions? Tips and tricks? Third party resources?

Answer 1

Setter methods like this are sometimes explained in more detail in the getter method, in the input text in the class documentation, or in one of the documentation maintenance guides that you see in the lower left corner. Sometimes you can also find hints in Cocoa headers by right-clicking on a name while writing code and choosing "go to definition".

Otherwise, there really is no other resource besides Google asking about it on sites like this, or using the mailing list. You can always write code to check what happens when you change its value. And, of course, if this is something really confusing, it’s good to also spend time publishing a radar bug report, so I hope it will be improved in the future.

Answer 2

Partial string checking is explained in the NSFormatter class .