Common Desktop Environment: Programmer's Overview

5 Basic Application Integration

Contents of Chapter:

Basic Integration Features

Organization of Basic Integration Information

Basic Integration Tasks

Basic application integration is a set of highly recommended tasks you should perform. These tasks do not require modification of the source code for your application.

Basic integration does not involve extensive use of the desktop application program interface (API). Therefore, it does not provide other interaction with the desktop, such as drag and drop, session management, ToolTalk messaging, and programmatic access to the actions and data types database.

Basic Integration Features

Basic application integration provides these features for end users:

A graphical way to locate and start your application on the desktop.
Your application will provide a desktop registration package, and your installation script will automatically register your application.
Registration creates an application group at the top level of Application Manager. The application group contains an icon the user double-clicks to start the application.
The ability to recognize and manipulate your application's data files.
Your application will provide data types for its data files.
Data typing configures data files to use a unique icon in File Manager to help users identify them. The data files also have meaningful desktop behavior. Two examples are:
- The user can start your application by double-clicking a data file.
- Dropping a data file on a desktop printer drop zone prints the file using the appropriate print command.
Easy font and color selection using Style Manager.
Your application will change interface fonts and background, foreground, and shadow colors dynamically.
The desktop defines general interface font and color resources that are used if no corresponding application-specific resources exist.

Basic integration provides these advantages to system administrators:

Easy installation and registration.
Upon installation, the application is automatically registered. The system administrator has little or no additional work to do.
Easy ongoing administration.
All the desktop's configuration files are gathered in one location. Furthermore, the application can easily be unregistered if, for example, the system administrator wants to update it or to move it to a different application server.

Organization of Basic Integration Information

Most of the tasks involved in basic integration are also performed by system administrators who are integrating an existing application into the desktop. Therefore, most basic integration documentation is located in the CDE Advanced User's and System Administrator's Guide.

The CDE Programmer's Guide contains a chapter on basic integration. Where appropriate, the chapter refers you to the information contained in the CDE Advanced User's and System Administrator's Guide. It also contains additional information specific to application programmers.

Basic Integration Tasks

These are the general tasks involved in basic integration:

Modify any application resources that set fonts and colors. This allows users to change the application's interface fonts and colors using Style Manager.
See the section on modifying font and color resources in the CDE Advanced User's and System Administrator's Guide.
Provide printing for your application's data files.
See the CDE Programmer's Guide basic integration chapter for details.
Some types of printing integration require that you modify your application code. They are optional, and are discussed in the CDE Programmer's Guide basic integration chapter because they are closely related to basic integration tasks.
Create the registration package for your application.
See this documentation:
- CDE Programmer's Guide basic integration chapter
- CDE Advanced User's and System Administrator's Guide
Modify your application's installation script to install the registration package files and perform the registration procedure.
See this documentation:
- CDE Programmer's Guide basic integration chapter
- The section on registering the application using dtappintegrate in the CDE Advanced User's and System Administrator's Guide

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