Apple Newton Utilities User's Guide download pdf (Page 140)

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CHAPTER 4

NewtApp Applications

4-2 About the NewtApp Framework

You can create most kinds of applications with the NewtApp framework. If your

application is similar to a data browser or editor, or if it implements an automated

form, you can save yourself a signiﬁcant amount of time by using the NewtApp

framework.

If you’re creating a specialized application (for example, a calculator) or if you

need to display more than one soup at a time, you shouldn’t construct it with

NewtApp, but should use the protos described in other chapters of this book. These

chapters include Chapter 3, “Views,” Chapter 6, “Pickers, Pop-up Views, and

Overviews,” Chapter 7, “Controls and Other Protos,” Chapter 8, “Text and Ink

Input and Display,” Chapter 13, “Drawing and Graphics,” Chapter 16, “Find,” and

Chapter 15, “Filing.”

Some NewtApp protos work in nonframework applications. For example, you may

want to update an existing application to take advantage of the functionality

provided by the NewtApp slot view protos. Updating requires a bit of retroﬁtting,

but it can be done. See “Using Slot Views in Non-NewtApp Applications”

(page 4-22) for an example.

When you use the NewtApp framework protos, your user interface is updated as

the protos change with new system software releases, thereby staying consistent

with the latest system changes. In addition, the built-in code that manages system

services for these protos is also automatically updated and maintained as the

system software advances.

A NewtApp-based application can present many different views of your data. For

example, the Show button displays different views of information; the New button

creates new formats for data input.

NewtApp applications use a programming device known as stationery—a

collective term for data deﬁnitions (known as dataDefs) and view deﬁnitions

(known as viewDefs)—to enable this feature. You should use viewDefs to add

different views of your data and dataDefs to create different data formats. Stationery

is documented in Chapter 5; its use in a NewtApp application is demonstrated in

this chapter.

The NewtApp Protos 4

When you put the application protos together in a programming environment like

Newton Toolkit and set the values of slots, the framework takes care of the rest.

Your applications automatically take advantage of extensive system management

functionality with little additional work on your part. For example, to include your

application in system-wide date searches, just set a slot in the base view of your

application called

dateFindSlot. (See “newtApplication” (page 3-8) in Newton

Programmer’s Reference.)

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