Introduction

This edition of the OO-Browser User Manual is for use with any version 4.06 or greater of the OO-Browser.

This manual documents the user interface and operation of the OO-Browser. It assumes a very basic familiarity in the use of InfoDock, XEmacs or Emacs, as documented in [Stallman 93]. It also assumes familiarity with object-oriented software concepts. However, many of the technical terms used in this manual are defined within the glossary. See section A. Glossary.

The OO-Browser is designed to be easy to use. It has point and click and menu-based interfaces that you can use, if you prefer, instead of learning all of the keystroke commands. The body of this manual discusses the mouse and keyboard interfaces. If you would like to study the menus, see B. Menus.

Chapter 1 of the manual discusses OO-Browser Environments as a means of organizing browser work (see section Working with Environments). See section Using the OO-Browser, if you would rather start with the interactive features of the browser. See section C. Features, for a quick overview of the browser's features.

Throughout this manual, sequences of keystrokes are delimited by curly braces { }, function names are delimited by parentheses ( ), and variable names are emphasized.

The OO-Browser (pronounced owe-owe-browse-er) is a multi-windowed, interactive, object-oriented class browser designed for professional use. It is one of the world's most powerful tools for exploring and developing object-oriented software. Its user interface is a bit like the well-known Smalltalk browsers [Goldberg 83], yet its commands are more flexible and easier to use.

The OO-Browser has a number of exceptional features:

• It presently supports seven object-oriented languages (C++, CLOS/Lisp, Eiffel, Java, Objective-C, Python and Smalltalk), one non-object-oriented language (C), and one documentation language (GNU Info).

• It is fast and works exclusively from the source code of libraries and programs to be browsed. Hence, it does not require a compiler.

• It may be used for both system exploration and maintenance as part of a professional software development tool chest.

• It quickly displays views of several important object-oriented relationships, over large sets of classes, not just a single class at a time.

• It has a completely direct-manipulation interface with multiple modalities.

• It is integrated with a powerful editing environment that can be customized to meet personal work styles.

<P>Refer to the following picture as we highlight the major components of the OO-Browser user interface.</P> See the last paragraph of this node for a link to an image that highlights the major components of the OO-Browser user interface.

The windows across the top of the OO-Browser frame are called listing windows; they display listing buffers that list class, method and attribute names based on user-specified queries. The viewer window fills the bottom half of the frame. It is used to display class source, summary information and help on the OO-Browser command set. The picture shows part of a Java Boolean class in the viewer window.

All key bindings described throughout this manual are effective only within listing buffers, unless otherwise indicated. This means that the keys may not be used within the buffers displayed in the class viewer window. Instead, all normal editing keys are available in most viewer window buffers.

<CENTER> <DT><B>The OO-Browser Textual User Interface</B></DT><BR><BR> <IMG NAME="OO-Browser UI" SRC="im/oobr-java.gif"><BR> </CENTER> Mouse click on the following filename to view a picture of the textual OO-Browser: `im/oobr-java.gif'. Under InfoDock, use the middle mouse button. Under XEmacs or Emacs with the Hyperbole system loaded, use the shift-middle mouse button or shift-left on a two button mouse. Otherwise, there is no built-in way to view the picture.

This document was generated by XEmacs shared group account on December, 19 2009 using texi2html 1.65.