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Can anyone explain to me, how applications usually communicate if one application has to send data to a second application. (an image for example). Or how can i find out how the communication is implemented?

In my example, i am trying to find out how "Capture One 11.x" is opening images with other applications (like photoshop or lightroom).

I was guessing, that "Capture One 11.x" will open images inside other applications by running the second application with additional start parameters (like the filepath of the opened image). But i can't find any evidence for this behaviour.

I am thankfull for any hint or help.

Lucca
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1 Answers1

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There are numerous ways applications can communicate with one another. Through temp files, pipes, sockets, etc.

Your specific question sounds like it boils down to "What is one way to have application A open file B in application C".

This is pretty easily achievable from the command line, for example, using the macOS command open with -a to choose the application.

open -a Adobe\ Photoshop file.jpg

or

open -a TextEdit file.txt
open -a MacVim file.txt

So, one very rudimentary way an application could open a file in another specific application would be to make a system call to macOS open.

drootang
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