InterApplication Communication describes the way applications use new
features of System 7--the Edition Manager and AppleEvents--to cooperate
more closely and improve the users' work flow.
Applications that implement the Edition Manager provide the ability to
automatically update documents. New Edit menu commands let users "Publish"
data to other documents and "Subscribe" to data that remains linked to the
original source document. When the published data is edited, the changes
are copied automatically to all its subscribers on the same machine or
across the network. For example, the user can subscribe to a spreadsheet
table in a word processing document. When the spreadsheet changes, the
word processing document gets the change automatically.
Apple events make possible even more complex interaction between
applications. It provides an invisible messaging language that will let
programs share data and commands. The user sees Apple event-aware
applications as those that can request services from each other. For
example, an accounting package can pass inventory data to a spreadsheet and
retrieve a graph of that data for display in its own report.