Application
An application in RIDDL represents an interface portion of a system where an user (human or machine) initiates an action on the system. Applications only define the net result of the interaction between the user and the application. They are abstract on purpose. That is, there is nothing in RIDDL that defines how information is provided to a user nor received from a user. This gives free latitude to the user interface designer to manage the entire interaction between human and machine.
There are also no assumptions about the technology used for the implementation of an application. RIDDL’s notion of an application is general and abstract, but they can be implemented as any of the following:
- Mobile Application On Any Platform
- Web Application
- Native Operating System Application (graphical or command line)
- Interactive Voice Recognition
- Virtual Reality with Haptics
- and other things yet to be invented.
This means a RIDDL application specification can be used as the basis for creating multiple implementations of the specification using a variety of technologies.
Applications abstractly design a user interface by containing a set of groups. Groups can be nested which allows them to define the structure of a user interface.
Applications have message handlers like many other RIDDL definitions. However, application handlers only receive their messages from actors, unlike other handlers. Typically, the handling of messages in handlers will ultimately send further messages to other components, like a context or entity