The information for a help topic on the class side is used to create a help instance.
Even if I technically create several instances of a particular help topic with information taken from the class side conceptually I have only _one_ help topic. The instances all share exactly the same content. Maybe the idea of 'Uniclass' (Etoys / Squeak') though not exactly the same may help. "UniClasses are classes for the instance specific behavior of just one instance." http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/2402 In Smalltalk I always have to deal with classes. A class is an object as well. Good to keep information for cases where I do not care to have different instances with different state. HTH Hannes On 10/3/17, Peter Uhnák <i.uh...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Oct 3, 2017 at 2:17 PM, H. Hirzel <hannes.hir...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> This is as if you would ask >> >> why are specs on the class side? >> > > I can certainly ask that, and there's in fact no reason why it would have > to be there (because when the layout is being retrieved, the instance is > already available). > > >> You may actually see Help information as 'meta information'. It is >> information about .... >> > > If you put it on the class-side of the class that it is about then I would > agree. But that is not the case here. The object is the content, not about > the content. > > >> >> The content is only needed once per topic. No different instances of the >> same topic. >> > > This is not actually true; the topic is instantiated anew for every help > browser opened (and every time browser is opened). > > And in fact the CustomHelp subclass is recasted to HelpTopic at runtime, > which makes the entire class quite pointless; which is what I don't > understand. > > Peter >
