About the Apple Event Manager
This page describes Apple events and how your application can use the
Apple events to other applications and to process Apple events received from
other applications.
system 7.0 introduces high-level events, along with a number of new
Event Manager routines that let applications communicate with each other application can create and process its own high-level events. The term
However, effective interapplication communication requires that applications
agree on a standard set of conventions-a common vocabulary. To provide such a
standard, Apple has defined a protocol called the Apple Event Inter process
Messaging Protocol (AEIMP). High-level events that adhere to this
protocol are called Apple events. You can help ensure effective
communication with other applications by using this protocol.
System software uses Apple events to communicate information to your
application; you should support the required set of Apple events sent by the
Finder to your application. In addition, you can support Apple events that are
can use Apple events to communicate with other applications in a standard way.
Using Apple events to ensure better cooperation between your application and
other applications helps users to get the most out of any one application or to
use the best features from many applications-in effect, combining the features
of many applications to achieve the desired result.
By following the standards specified by AEIMP, you can also define your own
Apple events. You can choose to publish these so that other applications can use
them, or you may choose to keep them unpublished for exclusive use by your
own applications.
The interapplication communications architecture of system 7.0 consists of
three main components:
If you intend to use high-level events that do not rely on AEIMP, read the
need to know to support Apple events in your application. To allow your
application to send Apple events to applications on remote computers, you may
wish to use the PPCBrowser function, which is described in the For descriptions of all publicly available Apple events, see the Apple Event Registry, available from Macintosh Developer Technical Support.