Viewing items in the in/out box 21 – Apple Newton Programmer’s Newton 2.0 (for Newton 2.0) User Manual

Page 782

C H A P T E R 2 1

Routing Interface

21-34

Using Routing

Registering to Receive Foreign Data

To receive data from a different application or from a non-Newton source, your
application must register its interest in such data with the In Box application
registry. To do this, use the

RegInboxApp

function.

If your application is no longer interested in foreign data, or is being uninstalled,
you can unregister to receive foreign data by using the

UnRegInboxApp

function.

Note that your application can register to receive data from a different application.
If you register a test function with

RegInBoxApp

, and that test function returns

true

for a particular item, the Routing interface changes the value of the

appSymbol

slot in the item to be the value of the

appSymbol

slot in

your application.

Be careful not to intercept incoming items that should be destined for other
applications when using this feature. The In Box application registry overrides the

appSymbol

slot of the item. The system uses the

appSymbol

slot as well as the

application data class registry (

RegAppClasses

) to find applications to which an

incoming item can be put away. The application identified by the

appSymbol

slot

is used as the default for the automatic put away feature (

AutoPutAway

) and for

the Put Away picker.

Filing Items That Are Put Away

When an item is put away by an application, by default it is filed in the same folder
on the receiving Newton as it was in on the sending Newton. This often makes it
difficult for users to find new items, since they may be put away in folders that are
undefined. To alleviate this problem, it is recommended that all incoming items be
put away unfiled, so that users can more easily find items and file them where they
want to. Incoming items should be put away unfiled even if the recipient has a
folder of the same name as the sender.

For most applications, you put away an item unfiled by setting the

item.body.labels

slot to

nil

. However, filing techniques vary, so

this may not work for all applications.

Viewing Items in the In/Out Box

When data is queued in the Out Box, or has been received in the In Box and not
automatically put away, the user can view the data directly in the In/Out Box.
When the user chooses to view an item in the In/Out Box by tapping the item, the
system looks for a view definition of the type

'editor

'viewer

that is

registered for the class of that item.

Your application should register such view definitions with the system if you want
users to be able to view items from your application in the In/Out Box. If you do