Applications Messaging Standard

[Mark Taylor]

On Thu, 15 Feb 2007, Tony Linde wrote:

> The obvious answer to this in the windows environment is the registry: the
> hub writes its info there when installed and everyone knows where to look
> for it. If we're looking at more than one hub app then a new one installed
> on a client machine overwrites the info left by the previously installed
> one. In the linux arena, which I believe lacks any such central organising
> entity, we could use the previous suggestion of a file left in an obvious
> place.

Tony,

my knowledge of Windows and its registry is pretty sketchy, but if
we were looking for a Windows-only solution that sounds like rather a
good idea.  Unfortunately, as you say, there's no such thing in,
e.g., Linux [Taylor in admission of Windows superiority shock horror].
Using different mechanisms on different platforms is something I 
believe we should avoid where possible, so unless there's some 
reason why it's an especially bad idea to write temporary
files in a user's home directory on Windows I think we're better
off falling back to the the $HOME/.ivoamsg idea on both platforms.

> Another option, which I *think* might work in both environments is to create
> a new mime type with the hub app 'registered' (whatever that means in linux)
> as the handler for that mime type. Plastic apps store their information in
> files of that type and then look for the app which handles that mime type
> and throw their config files at it (if it is running or invokes it first if
> not). Would that work?

Not sure if I totally understand this one or not.  However, regarding 
platform dependency issues: the idea of associating applications with 
MIME types does exist on Unix-like platforms, but it's much more 
sloppily defined and enforced than on Windows, and in most cases 
it's not easy (often effectively impossible) for application code to 
work out what application is suitable for a given MIME type. 
So I suspect this idea is also problematic for cross-platform 
implementation.

Mark

-- 
Mark Taylor   Astronomical Programmer   Physics, Bristol University, UK
m.b.taylor at bris.ac.uk +44-117-928-8776 http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/