SkyOS Tutorial - Contact Manager Part 1

Chris.Marshall

Description

SkyOS – Contact Manager Part 1 Sky Operating System Tutorial – Contact Manager Part 1 http://www.skyos.org Copyright © 1996 – 2004 by Robert Szeleney Author: Chris Last Update: Friday, June 11, 2004 11.06.2004, 7:57 1/6 Author & © Chris Marshall mailto://[e-mail] SkyOS – Contact Manager Part 1 Table of contents TABLE OF CONTENTS.......................................................................................................................2 INTRODUCTION.............................3 SETTING UP THE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT ...........................................................................3 Utility files ..........................................................................................................................4 THE INSTALLATION.......................5 THE APPLICATION........................5 Feature List ................................................................................................5 STANDARD FILE FORMATS...................................6 Contact File........................6 Contact Layout Definition File...........................................................................................6 11.06.2004, 7:57 2/6 Author & © Chris Marshall mailto://[e-mail] SkyOS – Contact Manager Part 1 Introduction Following on from my previous ...

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• Publié par: Phuem
• Nombre de lectures: 41
• Langue: English

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Author: Last Update:

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 SkyOS– Contact Manager Part 1

Sky Operating System Tutorial –Contact Manager Part 1

http://www.skyos.org Copyright © 1996 – 2004 by Robert Szeleney

Chris Friday, June 11,2004

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Author & ©Chris Marshall mailto://chris@outerspace.org

 SkyOS– Contact Manager Part 1

Table of contents T ABLE OF CONTENTS .......................................................................................................................2 INTRODUCTION...........................................................3.................................................................. SETTING UP THE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT...........................................................................3 Utility files ..........................................................................................................................4 THE INSTALLATION................5....................................................................................................... THE APPLICATION.5....................................................................................................................... Feature List ........................................................................................................................5 STANDARDFILEFORMATS...................................................................................................6 ContactFile........................................................................................................................6 Contact Layout Definition File...........................................................................................6

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Introduction

SkyOS – Contact Manager Part 1

Following on from my previous articles, this set of articles will take you through creating a complete application.The articles will be broken down as follows:  Part 1– This article, will introduce the series, will cover setting cygwin and the SkyOS SDK so that we can compile, creating batch files to automate building the application and installation files, and will detail the application that we are going to create. Part 2– In this article we will cover breaking the functionality of the application, start coding the application.This article will also cover the input/output functionality for the application and storing the information in memory whilst we are using it.We are also going to define the controls that we will be creating for the application. Part 3– In this article we are going to continue with the development of the ContactManger DLL that we started last time, so far we have de veloped the Read/Write functionality for the XML files, defined the memory allocation process, and defined the custom controls we are going to create.Now we are going to create the code for these control, please refer to the previous article for a description of the control functionality. Part 4– Will start working on the application that will make use of the ContactManager DLL that we have been creating so far. Part 5– Will introduce functionality to import and export the data for different formats. Part 6– Will introduce customization functionality, both for the data and the interface. Part 7– Will finalize the application adding About box, help etc.

Setting up the development environment I have selectedCygwinnd these articles will focus onfor developing SkyOS application a that environment.

Cygwinis available fromhttp://www.cygwin.com, after downloading and running the setup I would recommend downloading the complete set of tools…Whilst some of these are not used I found it easier to work with then going through each option finding what was needed.Further instructions of installingCygwinare available on the web site.

OnceCygwinhas been installed we need to install the SDK for SkyOS, this is updated with each release and it is recommended that you download each update to ensure that you have the latest headers and library files.

The SDK is stored in a zip file and the default directory for extraction ifc:\. Thiswill place all the files in the SkyOS directory.If you have selected to use this directory then you will not need to make any changes.However there are a couple of files that need to be mentioned.

Rules.mak– This file is used when building projects, this will need to be updated if yo u didn’t use the default installation paths.

Debug.mak– This is used by Rules.mak above but is missing from the current SDK, therefore you need to also download the DDK to get this file.This has been reported to Robert and hopefully will be resolved in a future release. 11 .0 6.2004 , 7 :5 73 /6Author & ©Chris Marshall mailto://chris@outerspace.org

 SkyOS– Contact Manager Part 1

Now we need to setup an environment variable to make compiling the projects easier. We are going to add the following the system PATH.C :\ cygwin\bin, this is where the make executable is located and will enable you to typemakein any directory to build the files.Setting of this will differ depending on version of Windows and isn’t covered in this article.

Okay we are now in a position to be able to compile our applications…To test these I would recommend going into thec: \skyos\sdk\apps\viewerdirectory from a windows command prompt and typingmakewill need to ensure that you create. You the following directory structure before compiling c:\skyos\packages\viewer\programs \viewer. Assuming that everything has been setup correctlythis should compile and create 3 dll and 1 app file.

Utility files In order to make things simpler I have created a number of batch files that allow me to build, rebuild, copy and create the installation files.These are details below for reference.

B u ild.bat– This simply switches to the directory that contains our make file and then runs the make command.

Rebuild.bat– This is adds removing of the *.o files ensuring that everything is built again.

Copy.bat– This is used to copy the compiled files to the installation directory structure. This is important because we want to ensure that we have the latest when we build the installation.

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The Installation

SkyOS – Contact Manager Part 1

The installation file will enable us to install the application on SkyOS.

In order to build the installation I have created an installsdirectory inc:\ skyos, in this directory I create a folder for each application that I am working on.This is where the installation files are stored.

The article“Creating an installable package for your application“on the SkyOS DN which details the structure of the installation files and the rules for creating these.

At present we do not have all the details for the installation because we have not decided how to break down the code.Additional references will be made to updating this structure during the articles and ensuring that we keep the installation up to date.

Why create the installation structure now?I think that it is important to keep the installation in mind from an early stage in the development, this way we can make sure that we are testing the installation during development.

The Application For this series of articles we are going to create a Contact Manager application, this will have very basic functionality to start with but will be a good starting point for other applications andfunctionality.

The application will allow the creation, editing, emailing, deleting of contacts.The contacts will be stored in XML format and will make use of features in SkyFS to allow attributes to be used, this will enable searching to be performed usingLiveQueries. Later in the series we will be introducing the ability to define additional data that will be stored for each contact, it will also be possible to define the layout for this additional data.

Each contact will be stored in a separate file, the application will allow different folders to be used to hold the contact information and will display a list of the contacts that are stored in the currently highlighted folder.

Feature List Below is the feature list that is currently planned for thisapplication

 Display contact list  Create/Edit/Delete contacts  Create/Delete folders  Allow Custom Data for contacts  Allow Customization of user interface  Import/Export contacts

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 SkyOS– Contact Manager Part 1 Standard File Formats Contact File Each contact will be stored in it’s own file and will use XML to represent the data.The following example shows a standard contact, this also shows how we are going to handle the custom data.

Contact Layout Definition File This will be defined later but again will use XML to define how the screen has been customized.

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Author & ©Chris Marshall mailto://chris@outerspace.org