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THE POWER OF P E N P O I N T," The Power of PenPoint™ The Power of PenPoint™ Robert Carr Dan Shafer Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc. Reading, Massachusetts • Menlo Park, California • New York Don Mills, Ontario • Wokingham, England • Amsterdam Bonn • Sydney • Singapore • Tokyo • Madrid • San Juan Paris • Seoul • Milan • Mexico City • Taipei Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book and Addison-Wesley was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in initial capital letters. ISBN 0-201-57763-1 Copyright © 1991 by Robert Carr and Dan Shafer All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. Published simultaneously in Canada. Sponsoring Editor, Carole McClendon Cover design by Jean Seal Set in 11-point Helvetica Light by Don Huntington 1 23456789 -MW- 9594939291 First printing, February, 1991 This book is dedicated to my wife Andrea, and my son Ian. R.C. This one's for Alicia, whose generation will look back on what we've considered so fantastic ... and agree! D.S. Contents Preface xvii Acknowledgments xxiii 1 Introduction 1 Our Friend the Pen 2 Mobile Pen-Based Computing: An Untapped Market 3 The Laptop Isn't a Solution 4 Why Build a New Operating System? 5 Key Requirements 5 What Is PenPoint? 7 Notebook User Interface 8 Application Framework 10 Embedded Document Architecture 11 The Document Model 12 Live Application Embedding 12 Hyperlinks 14 Applications 14 Mobile Connectivity 15 Compact and Scalable 17 A Solid Foundation 18 Summary 19 vii viii The Power of Pen Point 2 The PenPoint User Interface 21 Ambitious Goals 21 PenPoint and Traditional GUls 22 Windows and Their Frames 23 Menus and Option Sheets 23 Basic Controls 25 Some New Items 26 Tabs 26 Writing Pads 26 Pen Point's Notebook Metaphor 29 Benefits of the Notebook Metaphor 33 The Bookshelf 34 Gestures: The Pen Builds on the Mouse 36 Gestures as Commands 36 Ideas in Conflict 38 Standard Gesture Language 39 Using the Pen for Data Entry 40 Keyboard Support 42 More Differences 42 Direct Move and Copy 43 Stationery Notebook 43 Scrolling 43 Cork Margin 44 Embedded Document Architecture 44 Hyperlink Buttons 46 Floating Pages 46 Integrated Connectivity 46 User I nterface Consistency 47 Summary 48 3 Developing Applications for PenPoint 49 Why Develop for PenPoint? 49 The Learning Process 50 The Development Process 52 Thinking about Your Application 52 Prototyping Your Application 53 Designing Your Application 54 Mapping to the PenPoint Class Library 56 ix Contents The SDK 57 Contents of the SDK 57 Language and Software Support 57 Runtime Function Support 58 General Usage 58 Hardware Requirements 59 User Interface Design Guidelines 59 Summary 60 4 The PenPoint Kernel 61 Task Management 62 Memory Management 63 Multitasking Support Functions 64 How PenPoint Handles Multitasking 65 Multitasking within an Application 66 Reliability 67 Protection of the Kernel 68 Survival of Application Crashes 68 Recovery from Operating System Crashes 69 The Loader 69 Date and Time Services 70 Machine Interface Library 70 Other Kernel Services 71 Summary 72 5 The Class Manager 73 Features Supported 75 Programming Efficiencies 77 Unique Identifiers 77 Major Programming Tasks 79 Setting Up Message Arguments 79 Sending Messages 80 Creating New Instances 82 Controlling Object Access and Capabilities 82 Creating New Classes 83 Setting Up Observer Objects 84 Summary 85