Persistent Data on the Newton

Sharing Data

On many personal computers, information between applications is not shared. A typical example is names and phone numbers. A personal computer user has to enter names and phone numbers innumerable times: first in a faxing utility, again in an address book, again in a word processor, and so on.

On Newton, a user should never have to repeat such information. Because soups are accessible to any application, users have access to data from anywhere. If you are creating an application that deals with names and phone numbers, you use the built-in Names soup to get that data.

In conjunction with this, application writers are encouraged to publish the format of their soup entries so that other applications may access them. Apple publishes the format of its soups so you can obtain information, as well as modify or augment existing information (such as adding a favorite color to each name in the Names soup).


An online version of Programming for the Newton using Macintosh, 2nd ed. ©1996, 1994, Julie McKeehan and Neil Rhodes.

Last modified: 1 DEC 1996