Bug 100035

Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.3.92)
Installed from:    Unspecified

DCOP interfaces should be standardized as much as possible for certain classes/groups of applications. This would allow for more dynamic scripting and better usability of DCOP in general. In order to do this I have some ideas:

Every application that uses dcop should have a isTopLevel() dcop function that return true if it is the current top level application (i.e. the one the user has in focus.) Actually it would be easier if you could do a:
dcop localServer getTopLevelApplication() (or some such thing)

that would return for example:
(web_browsers,konqueror-<pid>)


The other ideas are best illustrated by an example, for instance media players are a class of application that share a set of functions that can be standardized across applications. Play, Pause, Stop, Previous, Next, Rewind, isPlaying, etc. 

By having classes corresponding to groups of applications (by type) it would be easier to establish a standard convention for dcop function names. You could have a DCOPMediaPlayer class that is a subclass of a dcop client (?) and specifies an interface (as virtual methods for example) for common functions like those I listed above. Then all KDE media players can sub class this class and implement the interface. DCOP should also be able to provide a list of all applications using this class and return (in the dcop command like too at least) the application name and ID. Then I can write a script that for example can pause all playing media players, or select the one that is playing and stop it, without having to hard code the dcop functions that each individual media player uses. This is useful for programs like KHotKeys or Lineak that control applications from scripts or keyboard buttons. Other application classes could be editors, mail clients, web browsers, calculators, etc.

Building on this further we could have:

dcop media_players isPlaying

to return a dcop reference to the application(s) that is/are currently playing.

dcop localServer getTopLevelApplication() could then return
(media_players, amarok)

etc.

Thanks.