An Application handles the lifecycle of Projects and provides windows to present them on screen. Depending on the document interface style used by the Application, the Application can handle multiple Projects at the same time, or only one.

Typical document interface styles are the Single Document Interface (SDI), the Multiple Document Interface (MDI) and the Mac OS X Application Document Interface (OSX). JHotDraw provides default implementations for these document interfaces.

A Project represents a work space for a document or a set of related documents within an Application.

Elements of an Application

JHotDraw 7