This manual is for application developers who create or maintain applications and wish to use the ToolTalk message service. This manual assumes familiarity with the IRIX operating environment.

This manual is organized as follows:

Chapter 1, “ToolTalk Overview,” describes how the ToolTalk service works and how it uses information that your application supplies to deliver messages. This chapter also lists the files installed in the ToolTalk product.

Chapter 2, “Participating in ToolTalk Sessions,” describes the location of the ToolTalk API header file; how you initialize your application and start a session with the ToolTalk service; how you provide file and session information to the ToolTalk service; how to manage storage and handle errors; and how to unregister your message patterns and close your communication with the ToolTalk service when your process is ready to quit.

Chapter 3, “Dynamic Message Patterns,” describes dynamic message pattern attributes. This chapter also describes how to create a dynamic message pattern and register it with the ToolTalk service; and how to add callbacks to your dynamic message patterns.

Chapter 4, “Static Message Patterns,” describes static message pattern attributes. This chapter also describes how to provide process and object type information at installation time; how to make a static message pattern available to the ToolTalk Service; how to declare a ptype.

Chapter 5, “Sending Messages,” describes the complete ToolTalk message structure; the ToolTalk message delivery algorithm; how to create, fill in, and send a ToolTalk message; and how to attach a callback to requests that will automatically call your callback routine when the reply to your request is delivered to your application.

Chapter 6, “Receiving Messages,” describes how to retrieve messages delivered to your application; how to handle the message once you have examined it; how to send replies; and when to destroy messages.

Chapter 7, “Objects,” describes how to create ToolTalk specification objects for the objects your process creates and manages.

Chapter 8, “Managing Information Storage,” describes how to manage and remove objects.

Chapter 9, “Handling Errors,” describes how to handle error conditions.

Chapter 10, “ToolTalk API,” describes each of the ToolTalk functions and the ToolTalk enumerated types.

Appendix A, “Quick Reference to ToolTalk API,” describes the ToolTalk functions in alphabetical order.

Appendix B, “ToolTalk API Summary (Functional Grouping),” describes the ToolTalk functions by the task to be performed such as registering with the ToolTalk service, sending a message, or creating a message pattern.

Appendix C, “Initialization Error Messages,” describes the ToolTalk errors that may occur during initialization or startup.

Appendix D, “ToolTalk Error Messages,” describes the ToolTalk error messages found in the message catalog.

The ToolTalk Setup and Administration Guide is aimed at system administrators. It tells them how to set up the ToolTalk service and maintain its files.

Table In-1 describes the typographical conventions and symbols used in this manual.