I finally got around to updating AppKiDo so that the various URLs it uses point to appkido.com rather than the now-defunct MobileMe site. The new version requires 10.5; I got tired of not using fast enumeration.

While I was at it I added the system service I mentioned I was thinking about, and I used NSServiceCategory to put it in the "Searching" category of the Services menu. I considered putting it in the "Development" category, but I think what AppKiDo does is more akin to Dictionary than to Instruments.

I made the search service "method-aware", which means it tries to detect method names in your text selection. I'm hoping other doc-search apps will add this feature. They can use my simple method-parsing class, if it helps. For people who have use for the method extraction but don't want to launch AppKiDo, it might be nice to put it into a standalone Service, but I don't know if I'll get to that.

The rest of this post will be an explanation of the "method-aware" feature, copied from the release notes.

"Look Up in AppKiDo" is a service that you can invoke from any application where you have selected some text. It activates AppKiDo and performs a search for that text.

Often what we want to search for is a method name. AppKiDo tries to help by determining whether the selected text contains an Objective-C message-send or method declaration. If so, it searches for that method name. Otherwise, it searches for the literal text you have selected.

For example, in Xcode if you have [self flyToX:100 y:200 z:300], you can double-click one of the square brackets to select the whole expression, then invoke this service. AppKiDo will search for the method name flyToX:y:z:.

If you happen to be in BBEdit, where double-clicking a bracket selects the text inside the brackets, the service should still work. If there is leading whitespace or a cast, or newlines or comments anywhere, it should still work, so if you have lines like this you can select them all and then invoke the service:

(void)[self flyToX:100  // cast to void to discard the return value
                 y:200
                 z:900 /*300*/];

Note that "Look Up in AppKiDo" doesn't work if there is an assignment in the selected text. For example, it won't work if you select this whole line:

BOOL didFly = [self flyToX:100 y:200 z:300];

The workaround is to select just the message-send — the part after the "=".

Another intended use is when you're looking at code that declares a method and you want to search for that method name. For example, you can select these lines and it will search for browser:child:ofItem: (the "-(id)" will be ignored):

- (id)browser:(NSBrowser *)browser
        child:(NSInteger)index
       ofItem:(id)item

This service assumes well-formed Objective-C. You might get unexpected results otherwise. If there are nested messages, it uses the top-level one. The algorithm mainly looks at punctuation — delimiters like brackets and a few other characters that need special treatment. The basic idea is that it ignores anything between delimiters, like (blah blah blah), [blah blah blah], or {blah blah blah}. For this reason it should work if your selected code contains blocks or the new object literals.

If you use the "Look Up" service, remember to assign a hotkey in System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Services for maximum convenience.