
NewtApp
What Is NewtApp?
NewtApp is a collection of protos designed to make it easy to create a full-featured Newton application. The protos act as an application framework, a collection of objects that work together. NewtApp provides the following benefits:
- It significantly reduces development time. Once you are experienced using NewtApp, you can create a fully functional application in a day (we do it all the time).
- It provides consistent functionality. Programmers who don't use NewtApp must implement many things themselves (for instance, Find, scrolling, and so on). These implementations probably differ from program to program. Having the implementation in protos makes it standard.
- It provides more complete functionality. Many Newton applications don't implement everything they should (for example, some lack an overview or have no Find support). NewtApp applications support most Newton functionality either automatically or with very little work.
- NewtApp applications gain free functionality from updates. When (and if) NewtApp protos are updated (perhaps in new devices, or system updates), your application will automatically use them. For example, a new device could provide some new system service and the NewtApp protos on that device could automatically register for that service. Any NewtApp applications, whether written specifically for that device or not, would receive the benefit of automatic registration for that device-specific service.
- Your package is smaller. Code that would otherwise be in your package is in the ROM.
- It allows stationery to be easily supported (see Chapter 11, Stationery for details). NewtApp and stationery were designed hand-in-hand. Therefore, NewtApp programs are ideal containers for stationery. While you can write non-NewtApp programs to support stationery, it is much harder.
- When to Use NewtApp
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- When Not to Use NewtApp
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An online version of Programming for the Newton using Macintosh, 2nd ed. ©1996, 1994, Julie McKeehan and Neil Rhodes.
Last modified: 1 DEC 1996