3 Improving The Design

3.1 Defining a project

From this point on, you should put the code for the task list manager into a project, rather than evaluating pieces of code using the interactor. Please refer to the Getting Started with Functional Developer for complete details on how to manage projects using the environment; this section provides brief details that tell you how to create a project specifically for the task list manager application. Use the New Project wizard to create a GUI application, and call the project task-list when prompted. The New Project wizard offers the option of generating template source code to help you get started. For this of this example, you must ensure that this option is switched off (this is the default setting).

Two versions of the task list manager are included with Functional Developer, so that you can load the code straight into the environment if you wish. These are available in the Open Example Project dialog, in the Documentation category. You can display this dialog by choosing Tools > Open Example Project from the environment. The two versions included represent the state of the task list manager at the end of Chapter 5, and at the end of Chapter 6. Please note that both projects have the same name within the source code--task-list--and you should not load them both into the environment at the same time.

The number of source code files in a given project, and the names you give them, is entirely up to you. For the purposes of this example, you will use the files suggested by the New Project wizard. When you use the New Project wizard, Functional Developer will create a number of files for a project named task-list.

module.dylan, library.dylan
: These files define the library and modules for the project. For the purposes of this application, you can ignore these files.
task-list.dylan
: Add non-GUI-specific code to this file.

Finally, you need to create the following new file using File > New, and add it to the project using the Project > Insert File command. Make sure that this file is the last one listed in the project window.

frame.dylan: Add the GUI-specific code to this file.