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- Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
- Path: sparky!uunet!think.com!ames!purdue!mentor.cc.purdue.edu!biomac1f.bio.purdue.edu!user
- From: pf@bilbo.bio.purdue.edu (Paul Furbacher)
- Subject: Re: Application Frameworks --- What is it??
- Message-ID: <pf-090193001757@biomac1f.bio.purdue.edu>
- Followup-To: comp.lang.pascal
- Sender: news@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (USENET News)
- Organization: Purdue University
- References: <C0JyII.12L@mach1.wlu.ca>
- Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 05:29:32 GMT
- Lines: 59
-
- In article <C0JyII.12L@mach1.wlu.ca>, litt3509@mach1.wlu.ca (Carl Litt u)
- wrote:
- >
- > I just got my upgrade to Borland Pascal 7.0 from the courier last week.
- > Did everyone get that little pamphlet promoting BP7 (it was purple in
- > colour)? Remember that special offer for Application Frameworks for $199?
- > Well, I was just wondering... how am I supposed to know that I actually
- > got Application Frameworks??? None of the manuals seems to mention it, and
- > I didn't get any special package saying *** APPLICATION FRAMEWORKS HERE ***,
- > ...Can anyone tell me what this
- > Application Frameworks is, and how I can tell if I got it?
-
- If you bought Borland Pascal, as opposed to Turbo Pascal, 7.0 then
- you essentially have Application Frameworks. It is not, as coolman
- Death (aka gtd543a@prism.gatech.EDU (death))(gag me, shall I go around
- calling myself Life from now on, how cooool!) would have you
- believe (what does death know anyway?) that it is option a) in
- his posting:
-
- "a) RTL source code for the TV and/or OWL libraries...."
-
- Actually, Application Frameworks has always been more associated
- with the Borland C++ releases for which you could purchase the
- AF separately or in combo with the C++ compiler. The pascal
- products have been, until the release of BP 7.0, either DOS or
- Windows but not both in the same package: you either received
- Turbo Vision with the Turbo Pascal 6.0 release, or OWL with the
- Turbo Pascal for Windows (versions 1.0 and 1.5). For either
- you could buy the respective runtime library (RTL). But to my
- knowledge (what does Life know anyway?), "Application Frameworks"
- has not been used in reference to the pascal product line.
-
- In essence, an application framework is an integrated class/object
- library, or in more archaic terms, a toolbox, which provides the
- object-oriented superstructure upon which the programmer builds
- an application. The basis is the application which does nothing
- more than initialize itself, present a desktop, and recognize
- one command, that being "quit". It is summed up in the following
- expression:
-
- begin
- MyApp.Init;
- MyApp.Run;
- MyApp.Done;
- end.
-
- With any self-respecting compiler/development environment which
- you can buy these days, you basically get an application framework.
- Whether it is the Borland environment for DOS/Windows, the Think
- or MacApp environments for the Macintosh, or the more
- revolutionary NeXTStep environment for NeXT or DOS platforms
- (SmallTalk fits in there somewhere as the grand pere of them all),
- the concept of an appkit or application framework is just the
- beginning of the new age (listening Death?) of programming.
- The DOS world is late in coming to this stage of evolution.
- If you haven't strapped on your object oriented rockets, with
- their AF after-burners, you ain't gonna live long.
-
- PF
-