Open Application Integration

I've often wondered why this is not already being done.

Good thinking. But why tie it to existing types of application? Should be open ended.

Sounds like a case for open API's maybe a set of standards.

I wonder if MIME types couldn't be extended into some basic OO methods. Something like devices interrogating each other with say SOAP, deciding on what capabilities are available and then advertising them to the user. Ultimately any interaction that involves a transfer of personal data would require the users authorization ([cheapShot] unless you're talking about Windows Update [/cheapShot]).

I envision: you buy a new phone that has MP3 (or OGG) player in it, the first time it gets within bluetooth range of your Linux PC it sees that a method called "Sync Personal Collection" or "Sync Playlist(s)" that lets you copy your music to the device (or as much as will fit). Everything is real easy for the user, intuitive menus, nothing obstructive or obnoxious ([cheapShot] can you say McAfee [/cheapShot]).

moopst:

I offer to you this food for thought:

http://www.grc.com/UnPnP/UnPnP.htm

Granted, the hardware in question isn't quite what you're talking about, but it does bring up the matter of untrusted hardware.

Quoting:I wonder if MIME types couldn't be extended into some basic OO methods. Something like devices interrogating each other with say SOAP, deciding on what capabilities are available and then advertising them to the user.

We have that already. It's known under various names like "mDNS", "Bonjour", "Avahi" and "ZeroConf". UPnP is one implementation of it. Too bad that UPnP is broken-by-design. It's clearly designed by the big boys intented to be used only by the little guys. UPnP doesn't scale beyond the trivial home network. Sad really.

I'm working on-and-off on something similar to UPnP but that does scale well. It's based on mDNS and XMPP streams.

Welllll... ok... way way way back, the Amiga OS had it's own implementation of the Rexx language, called Arexx. If an application had an Arexx interface, it meant you could write scripts to control the application, you could have several applications work together to do more complex things.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARexx

Something similar as a basis, perhaps?

EDIT: Incidentally, this could also be used to easily create GUIs for command line applications, or new GUIs for ones that already have 'em.