developerWorks: Connect KDE Applications using DCOP

“Every KDE desktop (from version 2.0 onwards) contains a little
known, yet very powerful feature called ‘Desktop COmmunication
Protocol’ or DCOP for short. From a developer’s point of view, DCOP
makes it very easy to add powerful scripting functionality to your
applications. From a user’s point of view, DCOP allows you to
easily take control of your KDE applications and combine them in
interesting and powerful ways.

“At its heart, DCOP is basically a lightweight mechanism for
inter-process communication which operates over sockets. DCOP
comprises a single server (dcopserver, which is started
automatically when KDE starts) and any number of clients
(DCOP-enabled applications). DCOP clients can send messages to each
other (via the server) to request information, ask for functions to
be performed, and so on. For instance, Konqueror may (and indeed
does) send DCOP messages to KMail to start up a new window with the
‘To’ field filled in when a ‘mailto’ link is clicked…”

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