Apple Newton Utilities User's Guide download pdf (Page 439)

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CHAPTER 11

Data Storage and Retrieval

About Data Storage on Newton Devices 11-7

For information on using store objects, see “Using Stores” beginning on page 11-29.

Packages 11

A package is the basic unit of downloadable Newton software: it provides a means

of loading code, resources, objects, and scripts into a Newton device. Most Newton

applications are shipped as packages that can be installed on a Newton device by

applications such as Newton Package Installer or Newton Backup Utility.

Packages can be read from a data stream or directly from memory. For example,

Newton Connection Utility uses a data stream protocol to load a package into the

Newton system from a MacOS or Windows computer. However, it is much more

common to use packages directly from memory, as the user does after the package

has been installed on the Newton device.

For a more detailed discussion of packages, see “Parts” on page 12-3 in

Chapter 12, “Special-Purpose Objects for Data Storage and Retrieval.”

Soups 11

This section provides important background information about soup objects. Topics

discussed here include

■ soups vs. union soups

■ related data structures such as soup deﬁnitions, indexes, index speciﬁcation

frames, and tags

■ automatic creation of soups

■ saving user preferences in the system soup

Applications using soup-based data storage must respect the user’s default store

preferences for writing soup entries and create soups only as necessary. The use of

union soups makes it easy to observe these requirements. Union soups provide

methods that respect the user’s default store preferences automatically when adding

new entries. These ROM-based methods are also much faster than equivalent

NewtonScript code. Union soups also provide methods you can use on those

occasions when you must specify the store on which to save soup entries.

Another good reason to use union soups is that applications almost never need to

create them explicitly. Once a soup deﬁnition is registered with the system, individual

members of the union soup it deﬁnes are created automatically as needed.

A soup deﬁnition is a frame that provides information about a particular union

soup. The soup deﬁnition supplies descriptive information about the union soup

and information required to create its member soups.

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