UnidrawIntro(3U)

NAME
Unidraw_Intro - Unidraw library for graphical object editor development

SYNOPSIS
#include <Unidraw/class.h>
#include <Unidraw/Components/class.h>
#include <Unidraw/Commands/class.h>
#include <Unidraw/Tools/class.h>
#include <Unidraw/Graphic/class.h>

CC ... -lUnidraw ... -lInterViews -lX -lm

DESCRIPTION
Unidraw is an architecture for creating object-oriented graphical editors in domains such as technical and artistic drawing, music composition, and circuit design. Unidraw simpifies the construction of these editors by providing programming abstractions that are common across domains. Unidraw defines four basic abstractions: components encapsulate the appearance and semantics of objects in a domain, tools support direct manipulation of components, commands define operations on components and other objects, and external representations define the mapping between components and the file format generated by the editor. Unidraw also supports multiple views, graphical connectivity and confinement, and dataflow between components.

The Unidraw library contains a collection of classes that implement the Unidraw architecture. The Unidraw library is used together with the rest of InterViews, except the graphic structured graphics library, to develop domain-specific graphical object editors. InterViews interactors and composition mechanisms support an application's look and feel, while the Unidraw library supports functionality unique to graphical object editors. Currently, the Unidraw library provides its own structured graphics classes, which are similar to but incompatible with the graphic library classes. Therefore you must not use both graphic and Unidraw classes in the same application.

General Unidraw classes are declared in header files in the Unidraw include file subdirectory. Component, command, tool, and structured graphics classes are declared in corresponding subdirectories under the Unidraw subdirectory.

SEE ALSO
InterViews(3I)

Generalized Graphical Object Editing, John M. Vlissides, Technical Report CSL-TR-90-427, Stanford University, June 1990.