Designing a reusable class cluster: a hypertext cluster

This thesis is a contribution to the study of object-oriented software engineering, focusing upon the reuse-approach to build reliable and extendable software. A hypertext system has been developed to study the reuse. The ET++ and MacApp framework class libraries provide standard components that can be re-used to develop application-specific programs. A plug-compatible design is presented in this work; this design approach facilitates building applications that work with frameworks based on similar principles running on different platforms. Hypertext is chosen as an example domain for designing class clusters, while ET++ and MacApp are selected as frameworks. A survey of reuse and hypertext is done at various levels. The hypertext specific classes are designed, keeping the commonalities in mind to provide adequate generalization. These classes are implemented on the ET++ and MacApp frameworks. There are variations in the two implementations, but overall design of the classes remains the same. The design is validated by testing it against the changing requirements of the system and adding new functionality to the system. The effectiveness of the plug-compatible approach is explored.