What interesting things can be done with dcop?

Question

I have been using UNIX for years and the dcop command only recently came to my attention. What is its primary purpose and is using it in any process a sign of poor design?

Answer 1

is using it in any process a sign of poor design?

Probably not, as long as you're using DCOP to perform some task that would ordinarily be done with a mouse click or hotkey. It's certainly way better design than trying to control the mouse to do what you want to do with the program!

But if you use DCOP to do something really simple that could be done directly with a shell command or a few lines of C code, without invoking a KDE application at all, it's probably better to just do it the direct way. (e.g. don't use DCOP to tell Konqueror to remove a directory tree, just run rm -rf)

Answer 2

I suspect it mainly exists because everything in UNIX ought to be accessible from the command line.

Answer 3

The Wikipedia article on dcop is worth a read.
It's great for any scripts to use to control processes, there's also good information on controlling Amarok via dcop.