Creating an Editor Application

An editor is one of the most common applications. In fact, most of the ATF sample applications are editors for some kind of data, such as the following:

• ATF Circuit Editor Sample for circuits.
• ATF DOM Tree Editor Sample for data in a tree.
• ATF FSM Editor Sample for state machines.
• ATF Timeline Editor Sample for timelines.

To create an editor, you put together many of the techniques discussed in this Guide's topics. These techniques do not exist in isolation of each other. For example, the DOM and adaptation are intimately related, and contexts work with adaptation and instancing. Although this section describes a sequence of things to do to create an editor, these areas overlap and combine with each other in practice. You may also want to develop in an order that is different from what is listed here.

This section shows how an editor is implemented, using as an example the ATF Simple DOM Editor Sample, which edits sequences of items containing animation and geometry resources. Its internals are described in detail in Simple DOM Editor Programming Discussion.

Each topic is a brief overview, linking to sections that cover the areas in detail in the ATF Programmer's Guide.