Mark will show us how to develop an Android application using Eclipse and the Android emulator.

Even the simplest app consists of many source files, created
automatically for you by Eclipse. The file AndroidManifest.xml
tells the app how to launch itself. It determines which class of
Java object will be instantiated when the app starts up, and which
method of that object will be called.

The visual interface of the app (the layout of the buttons,
sliders, etc.) is written in other XML files. The executable code
of the app is written in the Java files. We'll see how the Java
code makes contact with the XML code. Alternatively, the Java
code can ignore the XML files and create the entire visual interface
programmatically.

To respond to user input (a button press), we'll have have to create
a Listener object and register it with the Activity object
instantiated by the manifest file. This can get us into Java
anonymous inner classes, if people are interested in language issues.

Certain parts of the app have to be written Java, including the startup
and shutdown. Other parts can be written in C++ using the Android
NDK (Native Development Kit). If there's time and interest, we can
pass a Java object (e.g., a String) from Java method to a C++ member
function.