Central Data Structures
The central data structures are the structures that are a part of the
core entity. Each of the core modules as explained in section "Control and Data Flow"are
relying on one or more of the central data structures. This section
describes the relationship between the core modules and the central
data structures and the relationship between the central data
structures themselves.
Anchors
All anchor management is handled by the HTAnchor module. You
should normally not have to look directly into the HTAnchor structure,
but use the methods provided by the anchor manager.
Request
The HTRequest
structure is defined in the access manager. It is
currently not a completely opaque data structure but it will soon be
so be prepared to use methods like the ones to handle the HTAnchor Object Then we
can also better call it an object and not a data structure ;-).
Streams
Almost each stream module has its specific implementation of the
stream structure, but the generic one is defined in the HTStream Module. The
structured stream definition is placed in the HTStruct module. None of
these modules have any code directly associated with - this is left to
the specific stream modules, for example the HTFWrite stream.
HyperDoc Structure
The HyperDoc structure is different from the other central data
structures as it is only declared in the Library - the definition is
left to the application. It is intended to contain information about
data objects, especially hypertext objects that are to be presented to
a user. As an example of a definition, you can look at the Line Mode Browser where it is defined in
the GridText
module. Here it is called "_HText" structure and it contains all
information needed to present and manage a data object in a text based
environment.
Even though the Library does not interfere with the contents of the
HyperDoc object it does provide an API for managing the object. This
API is known as the "HText
API" and it is described further in the User's Guide
Henrik Frystyk, libwww@w3.org, November 1995