Update: Thanks for the chat

Hi, I would like to thank the users who have been chatting with me on MSN Messenger (zhamilton1@yahoo.co.uk is my user name if you want to join) in the last few days. Your input has been very helpful to move Screens forward. I should have StoreModule coded by the end of the week which are objects that represent PalmOS Code databases (prc's). The advantage of a module is that you just need to know its ID to use it for executing methods on it. If all goes well, I will work on StoreMessage which allows sending messages to modules and StoreMethod which allows calling methods which sends messages to modules. If I finish these three components then I am very close to having the object storage ready.

Update: Screens Source Code II

OK, First of all this version now compiles because I have removed the UISurface component from this build untill I finish it. I have implemented the StoreProperty and StoreType components correctly and did some cleanup with the StoreObject component. I know the siutation is pretty grim so I am going to cut one of the planned features of the object storage - dynamic objects. This basicly allowed to execute code from remote locations as if the code was local. It doesn't help if I add this functionality if Screens will never be released. Its a very complex feature and has alot of overhead and I have decided that it does not reduce the goodness that Screens will provide. http://www.geocities.com/zhamilton1/screens.zip Enjoy, Zakai Hamilton

Update: Screens Source Code

Here you go, A new version of Screens source code, http://www.geocities.com/zhamilton1/screens.zip Enjoy, Zakai Hamilton

Update - Thanks to my wife

Last night while realy trying to figure out some deep problem in Screens design, my wife offered help and in 10 minutes we had a solution which was simple, not hard to implement (its already implemented) and sounded great! The problem was that although properties are objects, because they are stored in a side hierarchy (that is member objects are on a different hierarchy then property objects), I did not want the API's to have expose if they are storing thier objects as members or properties which currently they had to. The reason they had to was because when default objects were created, they would be created as members or properties and have to be moved appropriately. The fix was that all objects are created as members and are moved to be either members, properties or any other side hierarchies I have in the future. Another fix was that I made StoreObjectAdd/StorePropertyAdd move the object to the location (instead of adding it) if the previous location of the object is the default. This allows the following code to work very nicely: UIWindowSetBackColor(Window, UIColorNew(255, 0, 255)); Where it sets the back color property of a window to the specified color. What happens here is that the color object is put in the default location and when the window function adds it as a property, it actually moves the color from the default location to be owned by the window itself. If the color had already been moved to another location, the window would not gain ownership over the color. Great!

Update: Objects location

It looks like I will have to add multi-threading deep in the object storage which I realy did not want to do. I wanted to seperate the two but it looks like they will need to merged. Hopefully I wont have to. I am also improving the creating of objects so you dont have to specify a location but rather objects have a default location in thier instance. Unless an object is filed into a location, it will belong to the next object that uses it. This allows for most common use of objects to be created without worrying about moving them manually. More about this later if it works out...

Update - Here we go again

OK, Guys... I back on the couple of days update again... Here are the components coded so far: StoreStream StoreChunk StoreHandle StoreItem StoreObject StoreType StoreProperty I am now working on UISurface which deals with drawing to offscreen and onscreen buffers such as drawing lines, rectangles and so on. StoreObject does not support methods yet and I am still thinking of pushing the method stuff untill after I have some visual user interface built-in. Note that UISurface cannot draw bitmaps. I am leaving that part for the dynamic object method interface implementation. Its funny how people told me to hurry up because someone else would beat me to the punch and while I do know of someone who might beat me, there is no one else. Thank you all for your support, it what keeps this project going...