Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!chinet!saj
From: saj@chinet.chi.il.us (Stephen Jacobs)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Communicating with Desk Accessories
Keywords: Semi-known  suggestion TOS 2.0
Message-ID: <8660@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 8 Jun 89 04:26:15 GMT
Organization: Chinet - Chicago, Ill.
Lines: 20

I hope the discussion of extended argument passing may be interpreted as a
beginning of discussion of what the next generation of TOS might offer.
Here's a suggestion that seems to be in the spirit of GEM:

Enhanced facilities for communication between foreground programs and desk
accessories.  Stuff to facilitate writing accessories that do services for
any program that knows how to ask; stuff to make it easier to ask.  So far
I can think of 2 main additions, one of which isn't so much programming as
agreement.  First is an AES call which would require as input a pointer to
an array, and on exit would have put the file names, application handles
and menu_register numbers of all the desk accessories presently installed
into that array.  The second is a standard message, say AC_IDENTIFY.  A
cooperating accessory, upon receiving that message, would respond to the
sender with a version id and a list of window handles it owned.

The general idea is to make it easier to mix-and-match program enhancements
without requiring the program and the enhancement to know EVERYTHING
about each other; especially without guaranteeing that one would ALWAYS be
at the other end of the message pipe.
                                     Steve J.