About The Process Manager

About The Process Manager Information about the multitasking environment

Process management in version 7.0 provides a cooperative multitasking

environment. The Process Manager manages access to shared resources and

the scheduling and execution of applications. The Finder uses the

Process Manager to launch your application in response to the user

opening either your application or a document created by your application. The

Process Manager allows your application to control its execution and get

information about itself or any other open application, such as the number of

free bytes in the application's heap.

Read this and its related topics for an overview of how the

Process Manager schedules applications and loads applications into

memory. If your application needs to launch other applications, read this

section and Launching Other Applications for information on the new

high-level function that lets your application launch other applications.

Although earlier versions of system software provide process management,

the Process Manager is available to your application only in system

software version 7.0. The Process Manager provides a cooperative

multitasking environment, similar to the features provided by the MultiFinder

option in earlier versions of system software. Use the Gestalt function to find

out if the Process Manager routines are available and to see which features

of the launch routine are available.

You should be familiar with how your application uses memory, as described

in the Memory Manager , and with how your application receives events, as

discussed in the Event Manager .

The Process Manager entries describe how you can

• control the execution of your application

• get information about your application

• get information about applications launched by your application

• generate a list of all open applications and information about each one