Developers'
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the benefits
to using ESCOT?
ESCOT supports the rapid assembly of components
in an authoring environment with which an author
adds components and wires them together. ESCOT
simplifies the task of wiring components with
a Broker object. The Broker may be used in the
authoring environment or as an API.
ESCOT also provides a suite of software components
suitable for mathematics education, with a particular
focus on middle school math.
What components are
available?
See the component
catalog for more details.
What do I need to do
to make my component work in ESCOT?
In order for a component to interoperate with
other components in ESCOT, it need only adhere
to JavaBeans conventions (see the JavaBeans
website). ESCOT provides optional APIs to
support more sophisticated component capabilities
such as the ability to define properties at runtime.
How is ESCOT 2.0 different
from ESCOT 1.0?
ESCOT 1.0 required component developers to implement
certain interfaces in order to interoperate; ESCOT
2.0 does not require any interfaces to be implemented.
This change enables ESCOT to use any components
conforming to the JavaBeans conventions.
In ESCOT 1.0, activities were deployed as XML
documents readable in an end user application
called the Runner; In ESCOT 2.0 activities are
deployed as applets runnable in a web browser.
This change is intended to minimize the amount
of initial and ongoing setup required.
How is ESCOT Builder different
from BeanBuilder?
The BeanBuilder is a new reference container for
JavaBeans in development at Sun - the next generation
BeanBox. It uses the traditional bean wiring mechanism
of defining listeners for property changes, which
is essentially a programming task. ESCOT Builder
extends BeanBuilder by providing a wiring interface
in which properties may be wired directly to other
properties without defining listeners. The ESCOT
Broker handles the programming behind the scenes.
What's next?
ESCOT will provide a next generation Broker which
allows nested properties to be wired together.
Ordinarily, only the top level properties of a
bean found through introspection are accessible
to wiring. The new Broker allows for recursive
introspection on bean properties so that if one
of the properties is itself a bean, its properties
may be wired.
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