<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> <HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Programming in XPCE/Prolog: Section C.7</TITLE><LINK REL=home HREF="index.html"> <LINK REL=contents HREF="Contents.html"> <LINK REL=index HREF="DocIndex.html"> <LINK REL=summary HREF="summary.html"> <LINK REL=previous HREF="sec-C.6.html"> <LINK REL=next HREF="interface.html"> <STYLE type="text/css"> /* Style sheet for SWI-Prolog latex2html */ dd.defbody { margin-bottom: 1em; } dt.pubdef { background-color: #c5e1ff; } pre.code { margin-left: 1.5em; margin-right: 1.5em; border: 1px dotted; padding-top: 5px; padding-left: 5px; padding-bottom: 5px; background-color: #f8f8f8; } div.navigate { text-align: center; background-color: #f0f0f0; border: 1px dotted; padding: 5px; } div.title { text-align: center; padding-bottom: 1em; font-size: 200%; font-weight: bold; } div.author { text-align: center; font-style: italic; } div.abstract { margin-top: 2em; background-color: #f0f0f0; border: 1px dotted; padding: 5px; margin-left: 10%; margin-right:10%; } div.abstract-title { text-align: center; padding: 5px; font-size: 120%; font-weight: bold; } div.toc-h1 { font-size: 200%; font-weight: bold; } div.toc-h2 { font-size: 120%; font-weight: bold; margin-left: 2em; } div.toc-h3 { font-size: 100%; font-weight: bold; margin-left: 4em; } div.toc-h4 { font-size: 100%; margin-left: 6em; } span.sec-nr { } span.sec-title { } span.pred-ext { font-weight: bold; } /* Footnotes */ sup.fn { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; } span.fn-text: { display: none; } sup.fn span {display: none;} sup:hover span { display: block !important; position: absolute; top: auto; left: auto; width: 80%; color: #000; background: white; border: 2px solid; padding: 5px; margin: 10px; z-index: 100; font-size: smaller; } </STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY BGCOLOR="white"> <DIV class="navigate"><A class="nav" href="index.html"><IMG SRC="home.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="Home"></A> <A class="nav" href="Contents.html"><IMG SRC="index.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="Contents"></A> <A class="nav" href="DocIndex.html"><IMG SRC="yellow_pages.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="Index"></A> <A class="nav" href="summary.html"><IMG SRC="info.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="Summary"></A> <A class="nav" href="sec-C.6.html"><IMG SRC="prev.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="Previous"></A> <A class="nav" href="interface.html"><IMG SRC="next.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="Next"></A> </DIV> <H2><A NAME="sec:C.7"><SPAN class="sec-nr">C.7</SPAN> <SPAN class="sec-title">Summary</SPAN></A></H2> <P>This section explained the basic object-oriented notions used in <font size=-1>XPCE</font>. <font size=-1>XPCE</font>'s data is organised in <EM>objects</EM> and integers. An object represents a state. An object is an instance of a class. A class describes the constituents of the state represented in its instances and the methods (actions) understood by its instances. <P>A class is a normal object, as are all the other constituents of <font size=-1>XPCE</font>'s programming world: methods, instance variables, messages, expressions, etc. This uniform representation allows for inspecting and changing <font size=-1>XPCE</font> using the four basic interface predicates from Prolog. <P>The basic interface predicates pass control from Prolog to <font size=-1>XPCE</font>. As control is to be passed from <font size=-1>XPCE</font> to Prolog (for example if the user presses a button), a message is send to <A NAME="idx:prolog:651"></A><B>@prolog</B>, the only instance of class host. This object will create a goal from the message and pass this goal to the Prolog environment. <P></BODY></HTML>