Features Provided by Application
Registration |
 |
Application registration
provides a graphical way for users to:
Locate your application.
Upon installation, your application is "registered"
into the Application Manager and has its own application group.
Start your application.
The application group for your application contains an icon
the user can double-click to start your application.
Identify
and manipulate data files. The application's data files will have
a unique icon in File Manager.
The user can use data file icons to:
Start (Open) the
application
Perform other operations,
such as mailing, compressing, viewing, or playing (audio) data
The Purpose of Application
Registration |
|
A
registered desktop application has certain configuration files used
by the desktop to provide the application's user interface:
Action and data
type definition files
Icon image (pixmap or bitmap) files
A directory and files that create the application
group
Optionally, online documentation files, desktop
help files, and Front Panel definition files
In order for these files to be recognized and used by the
desktop, they must be in certain directories specified by the desktop's
search paths.
It can be difficult to administer an application when its
configuration files are scattered among numerous directories. Therefore,
the desktop allows an application to keep all its desktop configuration
files gathered under a single directory. This grouping of files
is called a registration package.
If the application is desktop smart, it supplies a registration
package as part of its installation package. If you are a system
administrator creating the configuration files yourself, you can
create the registration package yourself.
The configuration files in the registration package are not
available to the desktop because they are not located in the proper
search path directories. The process of placing these files in the
proper locations is called
registering,
or integrating,
the application.
The desktop provides a tool, dtappintegrate,
that performs the registration by creating symbolically linked representations
of the files in the proper search path directories.
Many desktop-smart applications will automatically run dtappintegrate
during the installation process. If you are a system administrator
integrating an existing application, you can run it yourself after
you've created the registration package.
Once an application is registered on a system's desktop, the
application is available to all users on the system. If the system
is configured as a desktop
application server, the application will also be available to other
systems throughout the network.
The dtappintegrate tool
has a command-line option that reverses the process by breaking
the links. This makes it easy to remove the application from the
Application Manager so that it can be moved to a different application
server or updated.
Printable version
