Common Desktop Environment

This document serves as a guide for programmers looking to integrate existing applications into the Common Desktop Environment (CDE) or develop new CDE-compliant applications. It assumes familiarity with Motif, X, UNIX, or C programming.

The guide is structured into three main parts:

1. Basic Integration: Covers essential tasks such as registering applications with the desktop (creating application groups and icons), defining data types for files to enable consistent manipulation (e.g., double-clicking to open, dragging to print), and ensuring dynamic font and color selection via Style Manager. It also details different levels of print integration.
2. Recommended Integration: Focuses on best practices, including using standard font aliases for consistent display across CDE systems, implementing a common model for displaying error and warning messages, integrating with the Session Manager to preserve application state across login sessions, and incorporating drag-and-drop functionality as a direct manipulation accelerator for data transfer.
3. Optional Integration: Explores more advanced and specific integration topics. These include integrating with the Workspace Manager for window placement and monitoring, utilizing CDE's custom Motif widgets (like DtSpinBox, DtComboBox, DtMenuButton, and DtEditor), invoking actions from within applications, accessing the data-typing database to retrieve attribute values for data objects, and integrating with the Calendar API for managing calendar data in a networked environment.

The guide provides conceptual diagrams, task-oriented descriptions, and code examples to aid developers in understanding and implementing these integration features.