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Objects The architecture of QDT is based on what is called objects. When you look at a physical desktop, you would consider items such as paper, a picture, a calculator or a folder as an object. This is the same as you would do with the QDT Desktop. There are three basic types of objects; folders, files, and special function. Objects have specific properties and behaviors that can be applied to them or functions that they can perform. To simplify this discussion, we will refer to all these things as an object's properties. Each basic type of object has a set of common properties. Within each basic type, there are subtypes which have additional specific behaviors. And of course, each individual object can have its own behaviors A behavior is chosen by the user through different keystrokes or mouse actions while the cursor is pointed at an object. Some behaviors are done directly from these user actions, while others are available through drop-down menus. Behaviors can be any thing from executing a program to closing a folder to changing an object's properties to moving or even deleting an object.
Folders are objects that can contain other objects, including other folders. Imagine a regular folder on your physical desktop. One folder may contain pictures of your last vacation. Another may contain your tax records and forms to fill out. And another may hold insurance information; policies, pictures of items, receipts, etc. In addition to the standard physical folder analog, you can also consider a folder being the same as a drawer or a cubby hole in a desk. It may contain different tools such as a calculator or an electronic game. QDT folders, in addition to documents, pictures and other sorts of 'paper' can also contain executable programs. There are three types of folders defined in QDT. They all behave in similar manners as they can be opened or closed, moved around, stuffed into other folders, or even deleted.
Everyone is already familiar with what a file is. On a computer it is an object on a drive or in memory that contains some kind of data. This data can be in many forms; anything from being an executable program to being an image. Each file can have a type associated with it. Known types can be understood by the operating system along with QDT. In fact, QDT adds some additional type recognition through the use of file associations. There are three primary file types that QDT sets as object types; Program, Text, and Graphics. QDT also has a special object for file types that it does not recognize; Unknown. Within these file types, additional definition of type may be found. For example, a text file may be an editor file such as Quill or Paragraph file. It could be a spreadsheet file such as Abacus or QSpread. A graphics file could be a JPEG or a GIF format graphic. QDT can recognize many formats. Each type of file has a primary action associated with it in addition to the normal file type behaviors such as moving, copying and deleting.
Dynamic Drop Down Menus
Special Functions At this time there is only one object type planned that does not fit into the two main categories. In fact, this object type was suggested by an attendee to my introduction to QDT at the North American QL Show in 2001.
Most recent major revision: 01-Nov-2005 Copyright 1999-2006, JDH Software Technologies [James D. Hunkins] |
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Folders
Files
Each type of object and various object states can result in different options available to the user. Menus are dynamically adjusted to give the proper options for each of these situations. The menus can have different options shown and some of the options are available or unavailable as needed. Shown here are just three different drop down menus from a live session of QDT.