On Tue, Aug 24, 1999 at 04:04:03PM -0500, Daniel McCarty wrote:
> Stuart Uleman wrote:
> >
> > The Japanese developer community has finally gotten together a document
> > outlining the basic specs for programming Desk Accessories - small
> > helper applets that can be popped up over most applications.
> >
> > The document, available in Japanese and English, is available from the
> > Cute-n-Funky DAs page, at
> > http://member.nifty.ne.jp/yamakado/da/
> >
> > The Desk Accessory (DA) is an open standard to provide a safe
> > method of extending the Palm Computing Platform. Programs conforming to
> > the standard are referred to as Desk Accessories.
>
> One thing I've never understood is that the DA/App launcher is
> a HackMaster hack itself. So why would it be necessary to write a
> plug-in for a hack when you can just write the hack to begin with?
>
A DA is different from a hack in that a DA specifies an action to be
done in response to some trigger, but it does not specify what that
trigger is. This reduces wasted duplication of code by moving the
trigger-handling code into the DA launcher, and also give the user more
choice in when DAs are run. They're fine for simple utils, but if you
want to do anything in response to something other than user action
(i.e. trap a system call), you have to use a hack.
-Ben
--
Ben Darnell [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~bgdarnel/thoughtstream
