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The Xcode Research Assistant
The Xcode Documentation Window
The Welcome to Xcode Window
Reference Content Presentation
In earlier versions of the Xcode application, you can Option–double-click a symbol in the text editor to view its reference documentation in the documentation window. However, this practice takes your focus away from the code you’re working on. It may also provide you with more documentation than you need. In most cases, you may be looking for a symbol’s declaration or availability information. The documentation window shows the entire reference documentation for the symbol together with documentation for other symbols, which you must scan to find the information you need. Xcode 3.0 provides a mechanism to view reference documentation that addresses these issues: the Research Assistant.
The Research Assistant window (Help > Research Assistant) offers a concise view of essential reference documentation for a specific symbol. The information you can view in the Research Assistant includes sample code, deprecation information, and related documents. In addition, you can configure the order in which these items are displayed and whether they are shown in the window. The Research Assistant also provides reference documentation on build settings when you configure them in the build settings editor or in configuration files.
When you edit source code or a build setting, the Research Assistant unobtrusively displays the corresponding reference documentation in the way you prefer to view it. (The Research Assistant doesn’t work with Java reference documentation.)
After analyzing the information the Research Assistant provides for a symbol, you can view the symbol’s entire reference documentation or open the symbol’s header file from within the Research Assistant.
The content shown in the Xcode documentation window is now made up of document sets, which can be searched individually. With this feature you can select a document set, such as Core Reference Library or Developer Tools Rerefence Library, to confine a search to a smaller set of documents. Confining searches to particular document sets produces smaller and more relevant search results. In addition, a new type of search, called Title Search, allows you to base Reference Library searches on document titles.
The Welcome to Xcode Window (Help > Xcode News) provides easy access to tools and resources that help you learn about Xcode’s features, obtain help from Apple engineers or the Xcode user community, and identify bugs. This window contains the following panes:
Getting Started. Provides links to documents and resources that introduce you to Mac OS X and Xcode.
Xcode News RSS Feed. Lists items of interest to Mac OS X developers, including new or updated documents in the ADC Reference Library.
Documentation. Lists documents that provide essential information to Xcode users, including featured documents, which provide information about new technologies or special development tasks developers may need to perform (such as adopting universal binaries). This pane also provides Xcode usage tips to streamline your workflow.
Mailing Lists. provides links to mailing lists that discuss Mac OS X development.
Feedback. Lists resources you can use to provide feedback about your development experience with Xcode. This feedback provides valuable information that helps improve Xcode and developer documentation.
The declarations in all the API reference documents have been reformatted to regularize spacing and alignment, including the position of asterisks. Most reference documents also have changes to data types in declarations to accommodate 64-bit values. If those are the only types of changes to a document, it is not considered a revision and does not have a new date. For any other type of change, the document is a revision and has a revision type of Minor Change or Content Update.
Last updated: 2007-10-31
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