Chapter 11

Integrating applications into the Desktop

These APIs help you integrate your application into an SCO system. With them, you can ensure the best look for your application by defining different graphical resources for different display types. Using the SCO APIs will also help make your application's appearance and behavior consistent with that of other software running on an SCO OpenServer system. Users expect and depend on such consistency, because it enables them to learn and use new applications more easily.

You may use any, all, or none of the four APIs described in this paper. We recommend you use all four, because:

• If you use the icon object API to put your icon on the Desktop, users can start (launch) your application by double-clicking on your icon.
  
  If you do not, users must start your application from the command line (or by finding your executable in its directory window and double-clicking on that file's icon).

• If you use the display resources API to adapt to display resolution at run time, the SCO OpenServer system will load those resources that give your application the best appearance on the current display.
  
  If you do not, your application may look better on some displays than on others.
  

• If you use the color API to support the Desktop color selector, users can customize your application's color scheme with the SCO graphical Color control.
  
  If you do not, your application's colors will not change when users globally modify those of the Desktop, Desktop clients, and other applications.

• If you use the session manager API to communicate with the session manager, users can terminate a Desktop session while your application is running, then resume the session later with your application restored to the same state it was in at shutdown.
  
  If you do not, your application will still be restarted when the session is resumed, but its state at shutdown will not be restored and unsaved data may be lost.