Tasks Involved in Creating an Application

There are a number of main tasks you perform to create an application in event-driven Natural. The order in which they are explained in this section is the typical order in which you perform them. However, this sequence is not inflexible. For example, you may very well test a dialog several times in the process of designing it, and you will no doubt save your work more often during the development process.

  • Decide whether your application is "Multiple Document Interface" or "Single Document Interface".

  • Create one or more dialogs.

  • Set the attributes of the dialog(s).

  • Create and place dialog elements in the dialog(s).

  • Set the attributes of the dialog elements.

  • Define the tab order in each of the dialogs (from the Dialog menu, choose Control Sequence).

  • Save the dialog(s) to a name.

  • Define the global data area.

  • Define the local data area(s).

  • Write event handler code for the dialog(s).

  • Write inline subroutines for the dialog(s).

  • Write event handler code for the dialog elements.

  • Stow the dialog(s).

  • Test (check and run) the dialog(s).

  • Execute the application.

The tutorial in the next section introduces you to the most frequently performed tasks.