Applet Overview

Last updated on: 2/8/2013 3:58 PM 
Created on: 11/2/2016 2:22 PM 

In System Core 7, all front end user interface experiences are handled by an applet. At the core of the applet is the implementation of the interface that is specified by ISCApplet. The methods of this class are divided into three areas of functionality.

A class derived from ISCApplet must first implement the identification methods. These methods include getting the name of the applet and the associated image or icon that represents the applet. Additional methods include version identification information along with any additional copyright information that needs to be displayed in the framework's general About dialog box. Most of these methods are pure virtual and require applet specific implementations.

The ISCApplet interface also defines a method to build the initial settings that may be required by the applet. Because the framework is designed to handle settings that could be provided through an administrator, there is a common, required way of getting and storing application specific values. While that functionality is handled by the Framework's Configuration manager, the framework will notify all the applets via this method if they need to construct their initial set of setting values.

Finally are a series of methods related to files. The methods OnFileOpen(), OnFileSave(), etc, are provided here for the frameworks command line functionality. Since the framework can invoke applets using a batch file or script command line, these methods are implemented at the applet level where no user interface is required or permitted. While there are UI related counterparts to these methods exposed in another interface, it is recommended to keep all single file IO logic in these applet methods and have the associated UI call these methods to reduce the need for duplicate functionality. This produces file I/O logic consistently if invoked via a user interface or a command line from a command prompt.