On Wednesday 31 October 2001 10:21 am, Ellis Whitehead wrote:
 > I'm doing final preparations for the usenix/ALS conference and would like
> to check a couple conclusions:
>
> DCOP is usually been labled as an IPC mechanism, which is technically
> correct but misleading in practice.  It serves the following
> functions:
> 1) scripting;
> 2) informing a few programs to reload their config files;
> 3) a few programs (a total of about three?) communicate with the panel.

4) Communications with central servies like the kded modules (ssl 
certificates, print job handling, fav-icon loading), cookiejar.
5) KUniqueAplication: handling multiple invocations of a program by a single 
process.
6) KLaucher: centralized & uniform launching of applications and services.

> Am I right in saying that 99% of the time its use is for console scripting
> rather than IPC, as far as users and non-core developers are concerned?

DCOP is an important underlying IPC technology that allows us to integrate 
independent components much tighter. With DCOP we are able to make the whole 
desktop object oriented instead of merily having object oriented 
applications. Basically DCOP is for the desktop what unix-pipes are for the 
command line. As an added bonus it allows scripting by end-users. I would 
differentate between DCOP, the IPC technology, and DCOP-scripting. I agree 
that most users/developers will be more likely to be exposed to 
DCOP-scripting than to bare bones DCOP.

Cheers,
Waldo

 
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