AmiDock and application.library in AmigaOS 4 (cont'd)

Others used some proprietary text files. Neither of the two solutions were transparent for both the programmer and users. Starting with OS4, the programmers can use application.library's XML based preferences system. This system provides a specialized, object-ortiented approach for storing and retrieving preferences information. A part of such an XML file is shown in Picture 8 to the right. as you can see, there exists a very well readable structure compared to those binary files earlier used. A very nice side effect of using application.library's prefs system is that the applications automatically become very failure-proof when it comes to old, defective or wrong preferences files. This enhances the stability of applications. It's simplicity of use for the application developer allows also to spend more time in the right area of development: the application development itself.

But application.library allows a lot of further more features. among those features is now also a way to tell the system and all the other applications that a certain program wants to not be disturbed by other applications. An example for this would be a multimedia presentation tool which shall not be interrupted by background sounds or popup-requesters of other applications. Another good example are games: it surely is not very funny when you are about to reach a new highscore when suddenly your mailer brings the workbench screen to front and says: "new mail has arrived". -)

-- February 2003, Stefan Robl