About Solaris 8 Documentation

Solaris Common Desktop Environment Developer Collection

The Solaris Common Desktop Environment Developer Collection contains documents relevant for software developers programming in the Common Desktop Environment (CDE). A brief description of each document follows.

Table 4-4 Solaris Common Desktop Environment Developer Collection

Solaris CDE Document 

Description 

Common Desktop Environment: Application Builder User's Guide

This book introduces the Application Builder and shows you how to use it. The Application Builder is an interactive tool for developing applications. It provides features that facilitate both the construction of an application's graphical user interface and the incorporation of CDE's desktop services, including the Help System, ToolTalkTM messaging, drag and drop, and the Session Manager.

Common Desktop Environment: Desktop KornShell User's Guide

This book explains how to use the Desktop KornShell to create Motif applications. It introduces basic dtksh skills and provides several sample scripts. The samples are presented in order of increasing complexity, so you can gradually build your understanding of how dtksh works. The guide also includes a list of the commands supported by dtksh and their syntaxes.

Common Desktop Environment: Help System Author's and Programmer's Guide

This book describes how to develop online help for Common Desktop Environment application software. It explains how to create help topics and how authors and developers collaborate to integrate online help into a Motif application. For authors, this document is a step-by-step guide to creating and testing online help that can contain multiple text styles, graphics, and hyperlinks. For application developers, this document describes the Help System application programming interface that allows the application to invoke help topics. It explains the help dialog widgets, how to respond to help requests, and how to navigate hyperlink data.  

Common Desktop Environment: Internationalization Programmer's Guide

This book provides information for internationalizing an application so that it can support various languages and cultural conventions in a consistent user interface. This document contains guidelines and hints for developers on how to write applications for worldwide distribution, an overall view of internationalization topics that span different layers within the desktop, and pointers to reference and more detailed documentation.  

Common Desktop Environment: Product Glossary

This book provides a comprehensive list of terms used in the Common Desktop Environment and is a resource and reference base for all users of CDE. Glossary definitions can include information about the audience, where the term originated, the CDE component that uses the term in its graphical user interface, and a preferred term where appropriate. 

Common Desktop Environment: Programmer's Overview

This book provides a high-level view of the Common Desktop Environment development environment and the developer documentation set. It also contains an architectural overview of the entire CDE desktop. 

Common Desktop Environment: Style Guide and Certification Checklist

This book provides application design style guidelines and the list of requirements for Common Desktop Environment application-level certification. This document provides information to assist the application designer in developing consistent applications and behaviors within the applications. By default, this checklist assumes that your application is being designed for a left-to-right language environment in an English-language locale. These style requirements consist of the Motif 2.1 requirements with Solaris Common Desktop Environment-specific additions. Though Solaris 8 software predates the Open Group's CDE 2.1 standard, you might also want to consult the Style Guide Set published by the Open Group for additional style considerations. 

Common Desktop Environment: ToolTalk Messaging Overview

This book describes the ToolTalk components, commands, and error messages offered as routines to enable your application to conform to the Media Exchange and Desktop Services message set conventions. This document is for developers who create or maintain applications that use the ToolTalk service to interoperate with other applications in the Common Desktop Environment.  

Solaris Common Desktop Environment: Motif Transition Guide

This book addresses issues of concern to Sun Motif developers: how to run existing OPEN LOOK and Motif applications on the OpenWindowsTM and Solaris Common Desktop Environment desktops; and porting OPEN LOOK and Motif applications to the Solaris CDE environment. This document assumes familiarity with OPEN LOOK or Motif programming.

Solaris Common Desktop Environment: Programmer's Guide

This book describes the Solaris Common Desktop Environment. Use this guide if you are a programmer integrating an existing application into Solaris CDE, or developing a new application that uses the features and functionality of Solaris CDE. Some sections of this guide assume familiarity with Motif, X, UNIX®, or C programming. It is intended for use alongside the Common Desktop Environment: Programmer's Overview, and the Motif Programmer's Reference Set published by The Open Group.