Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!husc6!bloom-beacon!apple!motcsd!xdos!doug
From: doug@xdos.UUCP (Doug Merritt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Callable Application Interfaces
Message-ID: <282@xdos.UUCP>
Date: 13 May 89 06:43:41 GMT
References: <15323@louie.udel.EDU>
Reply-To: doug@xdos.UUCP (Doug Merritt)
Organization: Hunter Systems, Mountain View CA (Silicon Valley)
Lines: 23

In article <15323@louie.udel.EDU> thywiss@csvax.cs.ukans.edu (John A. Thywissen) writes:
>
>I propose the somehow, there should be a standardization effort for
>callable interfaces to applications and that a registry, similar to
>CATS's IFF registry, be set up.  Essentially, the interface
>specification would amount to a ".fd" file and a corresponding AutoDoc.

Interestingly enough, the freeware Andrew Toolkit (under X windows,
usually on Unix) supports this notion. I'm still trying to figure
out the release tape (currently my only source of info), but they
definitely support dynamically-loaded applications into an already-running
process, so that (I think) multimedia documents can specify execution
of some module that is not previously known to the system, and it
can do so very efficiently.

Wish I knew more about it. Looks like they may have done quite a number
of things "right".
	Doug
-- 
Doug Merritt		{pyramid,apple}!xdos!doug	doug@xdos.com
Member, Crusaders for a Better Tomorrow		Professional Wildeyed Visionary

"Of course, I'm no rocket scientist" -- Randell Jesup, Capt. Boinger Corps