An Excursus

FROM : Jamie Phelps
DATE : Tue Mar 04 21:47:55 2008

This is tangentially related to my previous message about 
NSSearchField and Apple's Core Data Tutorial, but it concerns my 
learning experience with Cocoa more than being directly relevant to 
that thread.

In talking off-list with another list member, he mentioned that I 
needed to bind the Selection Indexes and Sort Descriptors of one of my 
NSTableViews to the same for the controller for that table view, in 
this case MessagesController. That's fine and I appreciate the tip. 
(I'm not entirely sure I understand why, but at least I know I need to 
investigate this aspect of bindings more.)

What I find frustrating is that when I have a problem with Cocoa, it 
seems to frequently be because there was something I was supposed to 
do that was not mentioned in whatever tutorial I'm working with, 
whether online (including from Apple!) or in my text (Hillegass, 2ed). 
Is there some way that I should have known to bind up the Selection 
Indexes and Sort Descriptors? These kinds of "you're supposed to..." 
things are frustrating and make learning Cocoa seem more like a linear 
progression than a geometric one for me.

If anyone can offer tips about how to overcome this aspect of my 
experience I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks as always,
Jamie