ToolTalk
ToolTalk is an interapplication communications system developed by Sun Microsystems (SunSoft) in order to allow applications to communicate with each other at runtime. Applications supporting ToolTalk can construct "high-level" messages and hand them off to the system's ToolTalk server, which determines the proper recipients and (after applying permission checks) forwards the message to them. Although originally available only on SunOS and Solaris, ToolTalk was chosen as the application framework for the Common Desktop Environment and thus became part of a number of Unix distributions as well as OpenVMS.

While ToolTalk had "object oriented" and "procedural" messages and a complex "pattern" structure which allowed dispatch of messages to processes based on object names, message names, and parameter types, actual desktop protocols never took full advantage of its power. Simpler pattern-matching systems like Apple Computer's AppleScript system did just as well.

The D-Bus standard has superseded ToolTalk in some Unix-like desktop environments.
Q751436
interapplication communication
Concept
Q14647
Sun Microsystems
ORG
Q1208460
SunOS
MISC
Q14646
Solaris
MISC
Q49417
Common Desktop Environment
MISC
Q11368
Unix
Concept
Q479882
OpenVMS
MISC
Q312
Apple Computer
ORG
Q129137
AppleScript
MEDIA
Q768923
D-Bus
MISC
Q11368
Unix
Concept
Q4051585
ToolTalk
MEDIA
Q4051585
ToolTalk
MEDIA
Q4051585
ToolTalk
MEDIA
Q4051585
ToolTalk
MEDIA
Q4051585
ToolTalk
MEDIA
Q4051585
ToolTalk
MEDIA
developer
based on
instance of
operating system
operating system
developer