ObjC documentation

[Ritesh Kumar]

Hi!
         I was (trying to :-( ) go through the ObjC documentation on the
www.gnustep.org website. However, I am still not able to figure out a lot
many things related to the way ObjC is object oriented. I am having a hard
time trying to understand the language and that's a prerequisite before I
move towards the library.
        I got interested in the project after discussing about the fallacies of
the C runtime system in comp.linux.development.apps and got some
references to GNUStep. I am very interested in the project. I will
appreciate a lot if you can give me some pointers where I can find more
about objective-C both from a developers perspective and a language
analysts' perspective.
        I am still wondering why this project hasn't got the mass attention as
GNOME or KDE gets... strikes very odd! If I am thinking correctly (please
tell me if I am mistaken), ObjC provides you with the following things
besides normal C.

1)Runtime support from the language's runtime system.
        -- Control over dynamically loading modules.
        -- Access to these modules in the language should otherwise be
transparent. (No separation between dynamically loading modules and using
them transparently... as the case with C)
        -- Error control in the language for linking problems. Since C doesn't
have any generic mechanism for error control I don't see how one could do
this with C.
        -- Introspection / Metaclass hacking. The more the better. Java goes as
far as loading your own interfaces inside the same runtime system which
can be transparently used by pre-compiled binaries. However, it is still
partial as it doesn't allow you to instantiate new class declarations, or
tweak any of them in the runtime (I still have to think over how feasible
this can be).
2) All this in a compiled system. Issues of a "good" language would
obviously always be there.

This is straight taken from my post in the aforementioned NG.

-- 
Ritesh Kumar    Graduate Student     cs.unc.edu
"The Difference between Insanity and Genius is nothing but of Success"
                                  -- Eliot Carver (Tommorow Never Dies)