Basic Integration Features

Basic application integration provides these features for end users:

• A graphical way to locate and start your application on the desktop

  Your application will provide a desktop registration package, and your installation script will automatically register your application.

  Registration creates an application group at the top level of Application Manager. The application group contains an icon the user double-clicks to start the application.

• The ability to recognize and manipulate your application's data files

  Your application will provide data types for its data files.

  Data typing configures data files to use a unique icon to help users identify them. The data files also have meaningful desktop behavior. For example, the user can start your application by double-clicking a data file; dropping a data file on a desktop printer drop zone prints the file using the appropriate print command.

• Easy font and color selection using Style Manager

  Your application will change interface fonts and background, foreground, and shadow colors dynamically.

  The desktop defines general interface font and color resources that are used if no corresponding application-specific resources exist.

Basic integration provides these advantages to system administrators:

• Easy installation and registration

  Upon installation, the application is automatically registered. The system administrator has little or no additional work to do.

• Easy ongoing administration

  All the desktop's configuration files are gathered in one location. Furthermore, the application can easily be unregistered if, for example, the administrator wants to update it or to move it to a different application server.

Organization of Basic Integration Information

Most of the tasks involved in basic integration are also performed by system administrators who are integrating an existing application into the desktop. Therefore, most basic integration documentation is located in the chapter "Registering an Application" in the Solaris Common Desktop Environment: Advanced User's and System Administrator's Guide.

This chapter guides you to that information and contains additional information specific to application programming.