UI and User Interaction

[Bill Egge]

I would like to know what other's opinions and suggestions are about the design and methods below.

I have a DOS application and I am automating it in order to save time for the user.  The automation is done by sending keystrokes to the application.

I have modeled my automating software as follows:

Since each screen in the dos app has different options, I have created a class to represent each screen and have created methods that corelate to the screens options.

These classes and the methods encapsulate the sending of keystrokes, this has the effect of making my classes look like methods of any regular classes.

Each screen usually leads to another screen.  So I have made each method return the screen that comes after it.

This makes it possible to code something like this:

Code: [Select]


 PaySelect:= FMain.OpenProgramsMenu.ChoosePayroll.OpenProcessMenu.ChoosePayrollProcessing;
 Payroll:= PaySelect.StartNewPayroll;


In the above case, Payroll is a data entry screen and contains a method called "FillIn(Data)"

Sometimes the dos app creates warning message or displays prompts requiring a simple dismisal or a choice.

For instance, it may prompt to overwrite a file or may prompt that it has finished doing some process.

Since these prompts are handled by the user, I decided to treat them as the DOS app making a call to the user to handle them.

One case is a login popup window.  When the login window pops up, I make the DOS app (The class representing it) make a call to User.Login(LoginScreen);

Login Screen then has the method of "Login(UserName, Passcode)" which the user calls.

Thats the extent of what I have now.

But here is an idea I was thinking about.  Each warning popup is always in regard to some process.  So I was thinking to create Processing classes and instead of making calls back to the user object, it makes a call to a processing class.  This avoids loading the user object up with a ton of methods to handle everything.

What do you think?