# The Application Kit

The Application Kit is the starting point for all applications. Its classes establish an application as an identifiable entity--one that can cooperate and communicate with other applications.

There are four parts to the Application Kit:

- Messaging. The kit sets up a mechanism through which an application can easily make itself multithreaded and a messaging service that permits the threads to talk to each other. This service can deliver messages within your own application, or from one application to another--it's used for both inter- and intra-application communication. It's also used by the BeOS to deliver user event messages (key clicks, mouse moves) to your application.

- The BApplication class. Every application must have a single instance of the BApplication class--or of a class derived from BApplication. The BApplication object that your app creates is automatically assigned to the global `be_app` BApplication pointer. The BApplication object makes a connection to the Application Server and runs the application's main message loop.

- The BRoster class. The BRoster object keeps track of all running applications. It can identify applications, launch them, and provide the information needed to set up communications with them.

- The BClipboard class. The BClipboard object provides an interface to the clipboard where cut and copied data can be stored, and from which it can be pasted.

The messaging framework is described in the next section, followed by a discussion of scripting. The classes follow in alphabetical order.

The Be Book, in lovely HTML, for BeOS Release 3.

Copyright © 1998 Be, Inc. All rights reserved.

Last modified March 26, 1998.