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- Item 4795557 4-June-89 21:31
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- From: D2086 Efficient Field Svc, C Faith, PRT
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- To: MOOF Rollin, Keith A, APL
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- cc: MACAPP.TECH$ MACAPP Tech
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- Sub: RE- Document Commands
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- Keith,
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- I think that you do not understand what I meant in my link about commands.
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- I think in fact that the current MacApp arrangement inforces a modality that is
- not desirable. I do not suggest a violation of the desktop standards.
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- In order to understand where I am coming from it is necessary to expand the
- definition of document beyond that of just text and graphic documents and
- similar entities. Think in terms of documents for an accounting system for
- example, you are not going to have the same simplistic issues when dealing
- with a document that is very broad in scope.
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- In an accounting system I think it makes sense to think of a document as being
- the entire set of books for a particular company. Hence there will be many
- windows for that particular document. The type of commands that one might want
- the document to handle would include all those that pertained to the data in
- that document. Commands that open Windows for reports, charts of accounts etc.
- The document should handle all the commands, not the application.
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- To force the application to handle the commands discourages reuse of code and
- modularity. I cannot insert an accounting object into my general business
- management application for example. I might also want this application to
- handle general correspondence. Under the current scheme if I click on a
- general correspondence window I lose the ability to choose a menu item to open
- a customer address list from another document.
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- Unless I override TApplication Handle event to always allow certain documents
- access to commands and force my documents DoSetUpMenus methods to be called.
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- I believe that the concept of document as thought of in normal MacApp terms is
- oversimplified it is not broad enough in scope to handle a lot of common
- needs.
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- The changes I suggest would make more complex documents easier to implement.
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- Perhaps you could add another parameter to Tapplication.AddDocument call it
- (alwaysGetsCommands : Boolean) if true the application would give it commands
- and DoSetupMenu time.
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- Maybe I am the only one who would find this useful, I think not though.
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- - Curtis Faith
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-